


Haunted

by PickledDeath



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Canon-Typical Violence, Explicit Language, F/M, Gen, Implied Sexual Content, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-03
Updated: 2015-06-19
Packaged: 2018-02-23 22:02:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 54,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2557298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PickledDeath/pseuds/PickledDeath
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bruce Wayne is considering tearing down the old Wayne family mansion. Before he does so, he authorizes a paranormal investigation to take place over a three day weekend. He allows a family friend, Barbara Gordon, to arrange the investigation. She hires five psychics: Richard Grayson (telepath and remote viewer), Jason Todd (post cognate), Timothy Drake (psychometric), Stephanie Brown (automatic writer), and Selina Kyle (pre cognate). They are also joined by an earnest Damian Wayne, following his own objective. Together, they determine to spend two nights in Wayne Manor and determine if there is any paranormal activity inside the mansion or not.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Orientation

**Author's Note:**

> Full disclosure, I'm writing this story for NaNoWriMo. That being the case, this story may not update regularly at first. I'll only post chapters if I'm at my word goal and have the time to edit the chapter before I post it. However, the editing will be quick and only for grammar. I may not catch everything. On the up side, hopefully this story will be finished before the end of the month!
> 
> A note about the pairings, the only real pairing is Jason and Tim and its not the main point of the story and they're not really the main characters. Bruce/Selina and Barbara/Dick will sort of be happening in the background. There will also be some Dick and Damian bonding time, for those of you who enjoy that as much as I do.

Barbara looked out over the sparsely filled lecture hall in front of her. It was one of the smaller ones available on the Hudson University campus, but it was still more than enough room for her purposes. Seated in the deep red upholstered chairs were only six people. They were spread out haphazardly in the seats of the gently sloping room.

Seated in the front row was Bruce Wayne, the man that had made possible the reason that they were all gathered together. He was seated slightly to her right, his thickly muscled arms crossed defensively over his chest. He was staring blankly at the white screen that was dropped down behind her, his expression closed off and uninviting.

Seated a few rows behind him was Selina Kyle. Her short black hair styled and feathered and very fashionable. Her shirt was tight and black and showed just enough of her pale skin. She had painted her eyes with thick black eyeliner in the cat eye style and cherry red lipstick pulled into a slight smile as she glanced around the room, obviously inviting anyone to come up and speak to her.

Farther back and to the left was Richard Grayson. He was similarly friendly in expression and body language. He was wearing a thick dark blue sweater, his face loose and relaxed as he alternated between smiling at Barbara and looking around at the other people seated in the auditorium. His hair was a little longer than the picture Barbara had of him sitting in a file folder in her office. It curled around his ears and at the base of his neck, naturally dark and curly.

To the right of Richard was Jason Todd, looking sullen and uninterested. He was slouched low in his seat, his head down and his phone out, bright in the low light of the auditorium. The white streak in his hair stood out stark among his dark hair and pale skin. He was huddled down into a worn and battered leather jacket and was wearing a t-shirt with some kind of logo or print on it, but she couldn’t make it out.

Behind him, were the two students that she had enlisted: Timothy Drake and Stephanie Brown. They were sitting side by side in the middle of the auditorium, behind everyone else with their heads bent together. She had occasion to meet and work with the two of them before and was glad to see the two of them there, although she wished they had sat closer. Tim had his dark hair brushed off his forehead and was wearing a dark shirt under a plaid long sleeve shirt. The way she could see his leg jumping, Barbara could tell he was impatient for the orientation to begin.

Stephanie, sitting beside him, made a nice picture in a red and dark blue polka dot blouse, her blond hair tied in pigtails behind her ears. She had a stylus tucked behind her ear and seemed to be setting up notes on her tablet, a habit Barbara knew she often employed.

This was her group. The people she would be taking with her on the one adventure that might make her career. Barbara didn’t know whether to be ecstatic or to start crying.

“Thank you, all of you, for coming,” Barbara said loudly, her voice carrying through the hall easily, the walls and ceiling of the auditorium built with acoustics in mind.

Among her audience she noticed the shifts of attention. Bruce’s eyes focused on her, as did everyone else’s. The smile dropped off of Selina’s painted lips while a smile came to Dick’s. Jason put away his phone and Stephanie put away her tablet.

“If you don’t mind, now that everyone is here, I’ll get started on the orientation for the paranormal investigation of Wayne Manor,” Barbara said. She took a deep breath, her chest expanding as she did so. “Tim, if you could please hit the lights?” Barbara asked.

Barbara turned toward the large white screen behind her as Tim moved to the projector in the middle of the room and turned off the lights before flipping to the first slide, an exterior shot of Wayne Manor as it appeared shortly after being built.

On the screen, a huge jacobethan style building rose in grainy gradations of black and white. Its tall windows stood out against every surface of the building, its exterior a red brown rock and topped with sharp spires before a slate roof. In the picture, the serving staff were lined up in matching suits and dresses of black and white in front of the steps of the manor. Two men in bowler hats and a beautifully dressed woman in white with perfectly coifed hair in front of them.

“Wayne Manor was built from 1852 to 1854 by Allen Wayne and his wife Catherine van Derm,” Barbara explained, her eyes still regarding the image behind her. “The building was originally designed by Allen’s father, Solomon Wayne. He had moved the Wayne family from Boston to Gotham to take an opening as a judge when Allen was just a boy, but died of heart failure before he could complete plans to build Wayne Manor. When his son, now an architect, married, he brought his father’s ideas and designs to life in the form of Wayne Manor.”

“But, there were problems,” a male voice rang out from the audience.

Barbara turned to scan the crowd and followed the direction of eyes back to Jason Todd. He was staring unflinchingly back at her.

“That’s correct,” she said slowly. “Even before Wayne Manor was built, it started to wrack up deaths. Three men died during the construction of Wayne Manor. One man choked on a piece of apple. A second man was beheaded by a piece of falling glass.” Barbara paused, turning back to the screen and clicking a small button on the remote in her hand to switch the slide. A face appeared on the screen, old and black and white like the one before it. The man in the picture was roughed up, with a bruised cheek and disheveled hair and clothes. He stared back out of his picture with an expression of confusion and disorientation.

“John O’Malley, the man shown here, confessed to police that he beat his foreman to death with a hammer in the middle of his shift over a pay dispute. This confession was corroborated by multiple eyewitnesses. The foreman’s name was Earnest Pchulzki. He was the third man to die on the ground which would later become Wayne Manor.”

“The fourth,” another male voice rang out, this one familiar. Barbara looked down at Bruce, his face impassive as he stared at the blown up image of John O’Malley on the screen. “The first person to die on the ground that would later become Wayne Manor was Joshua Wayne. He was working as a spy for the Union during the Civil War. He was looking at the ground for his brother, Solomon Wayne, when he was attacked by a confederate supporter. He was stabbed and bled out before he could get to help.”

The room was silent for a moment in the wake of that statement until Selina leaned forward excitedly, a smile stretching across her face. “Oh. My. God. Are you Bruce Wayne?” she asked, the inflection in her voice implying that she was about two seconds from bouncing into Bruce’s lap with a wink and a pur.

“Mr. Wayne has asked to attend this orientation,” Bruce quickly explained. “He has been kind enough to allow us unfettered access to his family’s home, something that hasn’t been allowed for almost two decades. I hope his presence won’t be any detriment to this orientation.” She hoped that it went unsaid that his presence wasn’t an invitation to bother him.

She was pleased to hear a chorus of somber agreement. Selina fell back into her seat with a disappointed pout, but continued to regard the back of Bruce’s head with a curious stare.

“As I was saying, Wayne Manor was already building its own history before it was even built. It had four deaths already soaking the grounds it was to stand on. When Allen and Catherine Wayne finally moved in during the summer of 1854, Wayne Manor already had a head start building its legacy,” Barbara continued.

She clicked the button and the slide changed to a closer shot of Allen and Catherine Wayne standing on the steps of Wayne Manor. Allen Wayne was a tall thin man with a large mustache which was fashionable during that time. Catherine was dressed in an airy, but ornate white dress. Her hair was curled, coifed and piled on top of her head, topped with a small white hat garnished in tulle. Her hair was a middling gray in the black and white photo, but Barbara knew from paintings she had found of Catherine Van Derm that her hair color was closer to her own, a deep orange red.

“Allen Wayne is credited as one of the men who helped build Gotham into the great city that it is today. He was an architect and many of the historical buildings making up the business district can be attributed to him. After he made a name for himself as an architect, he began work on finishing his father’s dream home,” Barbara explained, pacing to one end of the stage and back to her podium.

“What you won’t be reading about in the same brochures that tout Allen Wayne’s architectural contributions to the Gotham skyline is that he suffered from numerous mental disorders during his short lifetime. Historians working with psychologists reading over Catherine’s journals, which she kept all her life, have posthumously diagnosed Allen Wayne with anxiety, depression and obsessive compulsive disorder. He may also have been suffering from delusions which led him to believe that Wayne Manor was filled with ghosts and evil spirits, some of whom had it out for him. They may have been delusions or they may not have,” Barbara said, turning to give a significant look to her audience.

Barbara pressed her button and the slide changed to another picture of Allen and Catherine Wayne, Allen looking a little older and Catherine smiling a little wider. Standing in front of them were two children. A boy in short pants staring somberly at the camera and a little girl with dark hair in pigtails.

“In 1856, Catherine gave birth to their son Kenneth Wayne. In 1859, she gave birth to their daughter, Lucy Wayne. Allen was insistent that both their children be schooled away from the Wayne Manor, but Catherine Wayne absolutely disagreed. Until, in 1870, when Lucy Wayne turned up dead.”

Another click, another slide. This one depicted a group of uniformed policemen walking in a line across a large perfectly manicured lawn and all of them looking down at the ground at their feet as they walked. A babbling fountain was in the foreground.

“In April of 1870, Lucy Wayne was playing in the garden with her nursemaid, Molly Hotch. In Molly’s written statement to police, she swears that she took her eyes away from Lucy for only two or three minutes to talk to a passing cook. When she turned back, the little girl was gone. The entire grounds were combed by police and the serving staff alike. The maid was questioned by police for days in an interrogation that would be considered unconstitutional by today’s standards. Nobody found anything. Until ...”

Click. The image of a little girl in dark pigtails floating face down in the same fountain appearing in the previous slide came up on the screen. Lush water lilies floated around her and the sun glinted off the water. The lecture hall was deathly quiet in the wake of that slide.

“Lucy Wayne was found floating face down in the backyard fountain three days after her disappearance. She was wearing the same clothes that she went missing in. A coroner found water in her lungs and stomach. Her cause of death was determined to be drowning.”

Barbara stared up at the image soberly for a long moment. Then, she pressed the button and moved on to the next image. Now, the Wayne family was dressed in a somber black, the remaining three of them staring morosely at a terribly small coffin standing in an array of flower wreaths and arrangements.

“In the aftermath of Lucy’s death, Catherine acquiesced to Allen’s demands to send Kenneth away. Kenneth was subsequently sent to England to a boarding school. Catherine recounts unbearable sadness in the wake of her daughter’s death. She also recounts her husband’s steady decline into depression and madness. By September of 1873, Allen Wayne was dead.”

The next slide appeared of a very different funeral. This time the coffin was bigger and the attendance was even larger. Mostly men in sharply cut suits, but also women dressed somberly in high necked tight black dresses clutching handkerchiefs in the black gloved hands.

“The official cause of death was ‘misadventure’, but Catherine’s diary makes it very clear that Allen hung himself from the parlor ceiling with a noose he fashioned himself,” Barbara said dryly. Smiling stiffly, she turned back to the few people sitting in the chairs facing her. “An auspicious start to an auspicious family.”

“Catherine Wayne continued to live in the house until her own mysterious disappearance in 1920. A maid recounts seeing Mrs. Wayne in the main hallway making her way toward the back of the house. She wished her a good morning, but Mrs. Wayne didn’t seem to hear her and continued on her way. She was never seen again,” Barbara concluded gravely.

A nervous laugh broke through the uncomfortable silence. Barbara followed the sound and made eye contact with a nervous looking Dick Grayson. “You’re kidding, right?” he laughed. “This sounds like something out of a campfire ghost story.”

“I’m completely serious,” Barbara responded with a smile. “Lucy’s mysterious death and her mother’s even more mysterious disappearance are all publicly available information. Allen Wayne’s death is at first unremarkable, until one gains access to Catherine’s diary, which I can make available to any of you should you wish to read it.”

“I may take you up on that,” Bruce rumbled from his place near the front.

Barbara acknowledged him with a stiff nod. She cleared her throat and hit the button to bring up the next slide.

“Kenneth Wayne wouldn’t live in the Manor after what happened to his parents and sibling there. But, he did allow his wife, Laura, to use it to host parties and the occasional seance,” she explained.

The image on the screen was of a group of people holding hands around a table. In the middle of the table was a stereotypical crystal ball. The woman at the far end of the table from the photographer had her head thrown back and from her mouth seemed to emanate a strange white smoke.

“Wayne Manor soon began to become something of a psychic hotspot. Paranormal researchers the world over made requests to investigate the Manor, but only the most prestigious were given permission. It became something of a legend among the paranormal community for consistently producing paranormal results.”

“That must make this investigation something of a dream come true for you, Ms. Gordon,” Selina purred, leaning forward over the edge of the seat in front of her.

Barbara struggled to pull her mouth out of a sneer and into a pleasant smile. “Unfortunately, Wayne Manor has been left inactive and uninvestigated for decades,” Barbara sighed. “There has been no observable phenomena in Wayne Manor for years upon years.”

“Then, why are we going?” Jason asked, exasperation clear in his voice.

“She’s hoping we’ll wake it up,” a quiet voice answered from the back. Everyone shifted in their seats to look back at Tim, small but unflinching. “In the previous paranormal investigations, the conditions for success were to bring along a reputed psychic of some degree. When the house is provided with a psychic it can speak to and drawn energy from, it reacts. The last few investigations didn’t render results, even with reputable psychics along. She’s hoping if she brings enough of us, one of us will be what it needs.”

There was a pause as everyone continued to stare at Tim and he stared impassively back.

“That’s exactly right, Tim,” Barbara said, drawing the attention back to her. “The five of you consist of five distinctly different kinds of psychics. I’m hoping that if all of you participate in this investigation, Wayne Manor will find what it needs to wake up in one of you.”

“That doesn’t sound ominous,” Stephanie muttered from the fringe of the group.

Barbara pointedly ignored her. “All of you are professionals who have participated in investigations before, so I won’t bore you with the run down of different tests and equipment that I will be bringing along. Suffice it to say that we’ll be running the gambit with this one. Does anyone have any questions about the investigation specifically?” Barbara asked.

A few hands went up. Dick, Tim and Selina slowly raising their hands. Before Barbara could take any of their questions, a voice rang out from the back of the hall.

“I have a question for Mr. Wayne!” an unfamiliar female voice said. Looking toward the back, over the craning heads of the other participants, Barbara saw a woman in dark wash tight jeans, pale pink blouse, and bottle red hair swishing over her shoulders. Vicki Vale had a notepad and pen in her hands and a press badge swinging from her neck.

“Ms. Vale,” Barbara said tightly. “This is a closed meeting. I’ve told you before on the phone that I won’t comment on anything for you.”

“Just one question!” Vicki called back, walking briskly up the middle aisle. Everyone turned to look at Vicki with the exception of Bruce, who sat with his eyes closed and a put upon expression on his face. “Mr. Wayne, is it true that you’re planning to bulldoze the stately Wayne Manor after this investigation is concluded?”

Bruce slowly stood up and turned to face Vicki, who was standing several rows behind him her pen poised over her notebook as if she honestly believed she would get a statement from Bruce.

“Ms. Vale, I’m sure I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Bruce responded to her evenly, giving her a baleful stare.

“Reliable sources confirm that estimates have been provided as to the cost and time that would be involved to destroy Wayne Manor,” Vicki continued, ignoring Bruce’s response. “That makes the sudden planning of this investigation very meaningful. Especially when you consider that there hasn’t been a paranormal investigation of Wayne Manor since before you were born.”

“Ms. Vale,” Barbara said sharply, her hands settling on her hips unconsciously. “I’m going to have to ask you to leave. This is obviously harassment.”

The only indication that Vicki had heard Barbara at all was the slight twitch of her carefully sculpted eyebrows.

“Mr. Wayne, what do you expect this investigation of Wayne Manor to find? Ghosts? Ghosts of some specific people, maybe?” she asked sharply.

Bruce’s thick eyebrows came down over his eyes, his expression shuttering completely. His long legs ate up the distance between himself and Vicki as he strode around the chairs and down the center aisle toward her. “Vicki, please stop while you’re ahead,” he said quietly. Barbara wouldn’t have heard him if not for the pervading silence in the room.

“Maybe the ghosts you’re looking for belong to some long dead philanthropists?” Vicki spat, emotion and vitriol clear in her voice. “Maybe your parents?”

“Ms. Vale!” Bruce’s voice boomed across the lecture hall, making everyone jump and Vicki freeze with her mouth still open. “That is quite enough,” Bruce said. “If I could please speak to you outside,” he continued, taking Vicki gently by the elbow, a stark contrast to the obvious anger in his voice.

Bruce walked Vicki to the exit in the back of the hall, everyone silent as they left. The exit doors were loud as they slammed shut behind them.

Barbara could hear as well as see the people remaining in the lecture hall shuffle nervously as they glanced back and forth between the exit Bruce and Vicki had just left through and Barbara, still standing stiffly on the stage. Barbara sighed audibly through the mic and all eyes swiveled toward her.

“I’m sure Mr. Wayne can handle Ms. Vale. Now, your questions?” she asked as pleasantly as she could manage.


	2. The Bar

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> New tag -> Alcohol. There is also some naughty language starting this chapter, I think.

Dick held the drinks in his hands above his head as he maneuvered around a group of loudly speaking ladies gathered around the bar. Dick had never been to this bar before, but that wasn’t unusual considering that he could count the number of times he had been to Gotham on one hand.

The Burning Bridge Tavern was, apparently, a favorite with the locals. It had looked like a hole in the wall to him, with the plain wood door and neon sign illuminating crumbling brick walls tagged sporadically with graffiti. But, Jason had assured him that it was the best bar around campus and he wasn’t disappointed. The bar was pumping loud music out to the many college boys and girls gathered around the bar and clustered around the standing tables. Dick had no idea how they had snagged one of the booths in the back, but they had.

Dodging quickly, Dick was able to spin out of the way of two cackling coeds and duck back into their secluded booth. He slid the two glasses, already coated with condensation, across the scarred tabletop to Tim and Steph.

“Two midori sours!” he said brightly, smiling at the two college kids across from him. “If you don’t like them, I will be severely surprised.”

Tim and Steph exchanged a doubtful look, before looking back at the drinks Dick had brought for them. The liquid was green and bubbling in the glasses, ice cubes bobbing at the surface.

“Come on, be adventurous,” Selina goaded them, elbowing Steph lightly with a wink.

Steph turned to Tim and shrugged. “Bottoms up,” she said, before picking up the glass and tipping it up determinedly. Time was decidedly less enthusiastic, taking a cautious sip of his drink.

“It’s sour!” the two exclaimed at nearly the same moment and in two completely different tones.

“Well, yeah,” Dick laughed. “That’s why they’re called midori sour.”

Steph grinned at Dick, who grinned back, obviously pleased with the drink he had got for her. Tim frowned down at his drink before slowly pushing it over to Steph to finish for him.

“So, at the risk of muddying our test results,” Dick started, rolling his eyes slightly to indicate how likely he thought that was, “what do you guys know about the ‘Stately Wayne Manor’?” Dick asked, complete with air quotes.

“Not much,” Tim replied with a shrug. “It’s sort of famous in Gotham for being haunted. But, beyond the fact of it being haunted, the stories and claims vary wildly.”

“Yeah!” Steph added enthusiastically. “When I was a kid, I always heard that it was haunted by a witch who used to live there before they put up the manor or something.”

“I always heard about the lady in white,” Jason rumbled from his corner of the booth. “Catherine Wayne. She would wander the halls looking for her daughter, blah, blah, blah.” Jason took another deep swallow of his beer and pulled an expression of distaste.

“What about you, Selina?” Dick asked. “You’re from Gotham too, right?”

“Oh, sure! I’m a gothamite born and raised,” Selina responded, shrugging. “You hear all sorts of things about the Waynes and you hear even more about their castle on the hill. One never knows what’s real and what just hearsay.”

“C’mon, you have to know something,” Steph whined, leaning forward with her eyebrows raised. “You’re, like, huge on the whole psychic scene.”

Selina leaned back, pouting and obviously unhappy to hear that. Jason smirked over his beer, before making a point to look away.

“Ah, I don’t follow ...” Dick said doubtfully, frowning at the strange change that Steph’s begging had caused.

“Miss Kyle is controversial in the paranormal community here in Gotham,” Tim said diplomatically, averting his eyes from everyone except Dick.

Dick frowned back at Tim, wondering if he should press any further. Before he could make any decision one way or another, Selina leaned over the table toward him, her long deft fingers pointing at him.

“I make too much money,” she said, giving Dick a long blink and wrinkling her nose to communicate her feelings about that. “Anyone in our field who makes too much money or gains too much recognition make a lot of enemies quickly. I’m sure you’re familiar with the phenomenon.”

Dick grimaced sympathetically. He was, indeed, familiar with the kind of strange competition that seemed to sprout up in the paranormal community, especially among psychics. He was about to respond in kind when Jason snorted in derision from his right.

“Not all of us take money from little old grannies to tell them that their cats are happy and like having their bellies rubbed,” Jason snarked, a mean smile smeared across his face.

Selina laughed, surprising everyone including Jason. “Darling, you could put me out of business if you had half a mind too,” she responded, still laughing.

“Tch,” Jason snorted, frowning determinedly down at his beer.

“Why do you say that?” Dick asked, confused.

“Because,” Selina said, taking a big gulp of her martini before leaning over the table in a conspiring manner, “Jason is a spirit medium. He can see and talk to the dead. I just play at being one if the situation calls for it.”

“Wait, I’m confused,” Dick said, frowning and putting his hands up. “Are you not actually psychic? Does, uh,” he faltered slightly, glancing at Tim and Steph. “Does Barbara know?”

Selina struggled to control a fit of giggles, “Oh, my gosh! You’re precious!” she gasped.

Dick looked helplessly at Jason, but he was busy glaring at his beer like it did something to him personally. Steph was tittering into her glass and Tim stared back at him blankly.

Eventually, Tim seemed to take pity on him. Sighing, Tim explained, “Selina is psychic. She’s a pre-cog, so think more crystal balls and fortune telling. She’s very reliable. Barbara has tested her thoroughly.”

“She has a bad reputation with some people, though,” Steph explained further, smiling at Dick. “Because she will do cat readings and seances, which pre-cogs don’t have any documented aptitude for.”

“Sometimes the tourists just want a little razzle dazzle,” Selina smiled, wiggling her fingers in some pretty good jazz hands. “And, I will stand by the cat reading! Cats and I have a special connection,” she exclaimed, sounding indignant.

“Okay. So, you’re a spirit medium, Jason?” Dick smiled and asked, turning to the other man.

Jason frowned back at Dick, “I’m a post cog,” he said shortly.

“He sees dead people,” Steph said, holding a hand up to her mouth and speaking sotto voce.

Jason rolled his eyes and Steph giggled, finishing the second midori sour.

“Not the most pleasant of abilities,” Selina said sympathetically.

“No, not really,” Jason bit out.

“What about you two?” Dick asked, smiling at the two youngest people at their table.

“I’m psychometric,” Tim explained. He sighed gently at the round of blank looks he got. “More commonly known as a ‘touch know’ or psychoscopic. When I touch particular objects, I can sometimes gain knowledge or feelings from them about their owners or something that they were used for or around,” he explained.

Jason frowned at the younger man, a small wrinkle appearing between his eyebrows. “But, not for everything?”

“No,” Tim responded simply. “The more emotional energy that is put into an object, the more I can get from it. So, it could be something that meant a lot to somebody. A locket or a memento might hold the feelings of the person who held onto that object. An object that was used for and around something very emotional, like a murder or a birth, might hold a lot of energy even though the object itself wasn’t very important. And, things that have a lot of tactile energy, like keys and computers and cellphones, gather energy just from the sheer amount of time they spend in someone’s hand or being used. You’d be amazed how much I can pick up off of someone’s cellphone alone,” Tim intoned.

Subconsciously, Dick checked that his cellphone was still in his pocket.

“Are they, like, visions?” Jason asked, his beer forgotten.

“They’re more like feelings, although sometimes I get flashes of images. A face or a house. Whatever memory the object brought up for the person holding it. It can be a little unpredictable sometimes,” Tim frowned.

“Hum,” Jason responded, frowning back himself.

The other three exchanged dubious glances between the two men, before Dick decided to jump in.

“So, Steph! What do you do?” he asked.

“Oh, yeah! I do automatic writing,” she explained, miming writing in the air in front of her. “I didn’t even know I could do anything like that until this guy,” she said smiling and jerking a thumb toward Tim, “talked me into trying it at a party when we were freshmen. It’s really crazy! Want to try it?” she asked, reaching into her bag and pulling out her tablet.

“Uh, sure! How does it work?” Dick asked.

“Just try to think something really loud, if that makes any sense. I’ll pick up the strongest signal in the air,” Steph explained, putting her tablet down on the table and pulling up a notepad app. She poised her stylus over the tablet and smiled at Dick expectantly.

“Okay,” Dick responded, closing his eyes. He breathed deep and pictured a milkshake. A chocolate milkshake with whipped cream and a cherry on top. He suppressed a sigh. He really needed to reel in his unearthly appetite. Where was he going to get a chocolate milkshake so late at night?

As Dick closed his eyes and thought about milkshakes, Steph also closed her eyes and began to make a repeated long loop on her tablet. As she did so, the loops began to transform into hearts. Heart, heart, heart, J, A, S ...

With a gasp, Tim snatched the tablet out from under Steph’s hands and shoved it into her lap.

“What? What happened?” Steph asked, confused.

“Did it work?” Dick asked, opening his eyes.

Jason’s frown was slowly growing into a shit eating grin pointed directly at a beet red Tim.

“Oh, god. Did it ever,” Selina laughed, pointing her own cheshire’s grin at Tim.

Steph eventually fought the tablet out of Tim’s hands and looked at the screen. She barely suppressed a squeal. “Eee! Timmy!” she yelled.

“Everyone, just shut up!” he snapped, his face red to the ears.

“What? Can I see?” Dick asked, confused.

“Absolutely not!” Tim snapped. He then hurriedly shoved the tablet into Steph’s hands before jumping up. “I’ve got to go to the bathroom,” he mumbled, before disappearing into the crowd.

“He is going to come back, right?” Dick asked, worried.

“Once he nurses his pride. I’m his ride, anyway. He can’t leave without me,” Steph responded.

“I think he has the right idea,” Selina purred, wiggling toward the end of the booth. Steph stood up to let her out. “Off to the little girl’s room! Be right back,” Selina tittered, waving at the three remaining people at the table with her fingers.

“What about you, Richard?” Steph asked, smiling at Dick as she tucked her tablet back into her bag.

“Oh, please! Call me Dick,” Dick responded, waving his hands in the air. He ignored Jason’s snort of laughter from his right. “My ability is a little, uh, unusual, I guess?” he said slowly, scratching at his cheek.

“Come on! I attend Barbara’s parapsychology lectures regularly. Just try me!” Steph enthused, planting her elbows on the table and leaning forward.

Dick sighed and gave Stepha a long suffering laugh, before closing his eyes. He let his mind drift. In his mind’s eye he saw Barbara Gordon, the young and determined professor that had tracked him down out in California and talked him into traveling across the country to participate in her investigation. She was dressed down now, her long red hair tumbling over her shoulders. She was sitting on an old worn in green couch in a long sleeve shirt and pajama pants with a laptop balanced on her knee. Someone was talking to her from the kitchen and she answered them distractedly.

“He calls her Babs...” Dick said slowly, a smile stretching across his face. “What a cute nickname, don’t you think?” he asked, opening his eyes to smile at Jason and Steph.

“Oooookay,” Jason said slowly.

“Oh!” Steph slammed her hand on the table, her face lighting up in recognition. “Remote viewing, right?” she asked, pointing a finger at Dick.

“Correct!” Dick exclaimed, impressed despite himself.

“Okay, you guys are weird,” Jason groused. “I’m gonna go check on Tim.”

“Aw, you’re no fun!” Steph whined as Dick got up to let Jason out of the booth.

“That’s me. No fun all day every day,” Jason harrumphed. He stopped at the end of the table and shoved his hands in his pockets. “Hey, nice meeting you guys if I don’t see you again before tomorrow.”

Dick felt his eyebrows go up and imagined that Steph was wearing a similar expression. “Yeah, nice to meet you too, Jason,” Dick responded automatically.

Jason nodded at the both of them before turning around and disappearing into the crowds.

Surprised, Steph turned to Dick and they shared similar expressions of disbelief. “Well,” she said primly. “I guess Tim might not be coming back.”

Meanwhile, across the bar, Selina weaved through groups of loud coeds gesturing wildly until she reached the back of the bar and the predictably small hallway that terminated in two swinging doors. In the predictable hallway was a predictable line for the women’s bathroom. Sighing, Selina leaned against the the wall and pulled out a small compact mirror which she used to check her reflection.

After a few minutes of standing there, a more reserved looking Tim exited the men’s room. He was still looking a little pink on the tips of his ears, but otherwise seemed to have regained his composure. He smiled haltingly at Selina, who grinned at him as he walked past her back toward the table.

It seemed like an age before Selina moved through the line and finally into a stall at the end of the bathroom. The door wouldn’t latch properly, so she resorted to holding it shut with her foot while she did her business.

Once she was done, she stumbled out into the bathroom and toward the sinks. She could still hear loud music and louder voices from out in the bar, but the bathroom was eerily quiet. Turning off the water, Selina shook her hands to rid herself of whatever excess water still clung to them and looked around for a towel dispenser or one of those blow dryers mounted on the wall. As she glanced around, she suddenly noticed a flutter of black near the top of a stall.

Looking up, Selina saw a crow perched on top of the farthest stall. Its feathers were black and shiny, catching the light and shining it back in bent shades of blue and purple. Its beak was long and glossy and its eyes seemed to stare back into Selina’s as she watched it.

Slowly, one foot in front of the other, Selina started to move toward the bird. It flicked its wings nervously and opened and closed its beak the closer she got. Finally it flew away, startling Selina back with a caw and a jump. Selina nearly tripped over her own feet as she stumbled backward to get out of its way. It flew right over her head and straight for the mirror.

Selina turned sharply, her eyes huge as she expected to see the bird slam headfirst into the glass, breaking its own neck and possibly the mirror. To her surprise, the bird flew right through the mirror as if it wasn’t there and into a large wooded area with a familiar fountain.

Breath stuck in her chest, Selina approached the glass. It no longer appeared to be a mirror so much as a window into an overgrown garden at midday. Huge towering oak and maple trees leaned over a cement lanai leading out to a stone fountain headed by a sculpture of a woman in greco-roman robes covering her eyes. It was the same fountain that had featured prominently in the images Barbara Gordon had just been projecting on a screen in the lecture hall they all had just left.

As Selina stepped closer, the image adjusted itself for her position, showing her more of the garden. She looked up and what little she could see of the sky was a pale cloudless blue. She looked down and saw herself lying motionless on the cement lanai.

The Selina in the mirror was dressed in a black tank top and a pair of pajama pants Selina recognized as her own. She was lying on her back, her arms thrown wide to either side of her and her eyes staring blankly upward, unseeing. Around and on top of her body, a murder of crows pecked and picked at her flesh. They bit at her cheek and snapped at the soft skin of her inner arm. They cawed and cackled at one another, ruffled their feathers and lunged back and forth as they fought one another for the right to peck at Selina’s dead body.

Tears gathered on the fringe of her eyelashes and with one gargantuan effort, Selina forced air into her starving lungs in a single strangled gasp. And, just like that, the spell was broken. The mirror cleared and only her own shocked expression stared back at her.

Suppressing sobs, Selina rushed from the bathroom and pushed past people blindly as she made her way toward the exit. She crashed out the front door and ran full tilt down the street back toward the college parking lot where she had left her car.

“Hey! Where are you going?” she heard someone yell after her, but she didn’t stop, didn’t slow down. She just kept running.

“Do you think she’s okay?” Tim asked, worry and curiosity filling his voice. Jason walked over to where Tim was poised, halfway down the sidewalk after Selina.

“I don’t know. Just let her go for now,” Jason said slowly, coming up and laying a heavy hand on Tim’s shoulder.

Tim glanced doubtfully from Jason to Selina’s rapidly disappearing figure.

“She is a pre-cog. She might have seen something unsavory. You know the both of us can relate,” Jason said with a shrug.

Tim frowned up at Jason, looking back down the street to see Selina turn into the parking lot and disappear behind a building.

“You’re right,” he said quietly.

Jason looked down at Tim with an unreadable expression for a beat before marshalling his expression into a cocky grin. “Of course I’m right,” he replied with a bark of a laugh, shaking Tim out of his thoughts. “As I was saying, I vote for your place. Mine is a fucking mess. I can’t imagine anything you have to live within a 100 foot radius is anything less than sparkling clean, so it’s yours or a hotel, princess.”


	3. The Night Before

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two characters will very obviously be having sex off screen in this chapter. Just a forewarning. I won't be raising the rating, since it does happen off screen. But, just wanted to give everyone a head's up.

Bruce was dragging when he finally returned home to the penthouse that night. It had been a long day at Wayne Enterprises with him constantly moving in and out of R&D meetings. He had hoped the orientation that night would be quiet and uneventful, but was proven disastrously wrong. Not that Bruce minded. He was glad that he was there to deal with Vicki. He hated that she had found out about the investigation at all and if he ever found out who had told her, he would be hard pressed to stop himself from wringing that person’s neck.

He slowly heaved himself out of the elevator and directly into the penthouse, pausing by the entrance. Sitting by the silver elevator doors was a familiar bookbag and a duffle bag that he didn’t recognize. Bruce frowned down at the two bags heaped by the door.

“Master Bruce,” Alfred greeted him as he came out of the kitchen, wiping his hands on a plain white apron he had tied around his waist. “You’re late,” he stated simply, the two words both a reproach and a question.

“There was a small problem at the orientation,” Bruce responded shortly. “Is that Damian’s bookbag?” Bruce asked, still frowning down at the bags by the door.

Alfred’s eyebrows went up as his heavy eyelids went down, a world weary sigh slipping out of him. “And his duffle bag,” Alfred answered. “He has been packed and ready to leave since he got home from school today.”

“I just don’t understand his sudden interest in the investigation. I wish I never would have mentioned it in front of him,” Bruce lamented, tearing his eyes away from the bags sitting at the door and moving past Alfred into the kitchen. The old butler followed Bruce before detouring toward the oven. Opening the door, he pulled Bruce’s covered plate out and placed it down in front of him with a glass of water.

“He’s young yet, Master Bruce,” Alfred commented gently. “He’s likely to go through phases just like any other boy.”

Bruce picked up his fork and began to poke at the meal in front of him dejectedly. “But, ghosts?” he muttered.

“I seem to remember that you had a similar interest when you were young,” Alfred sniffed.

“That was different,” Bruce replied flatly, spearing a piece of potato on the end of his fork and popping it into his mouth.

“Was it?” Alfred asked innocently.

Bruce frowned down at his plate. He supposed it really wasn’t that different. His motivation as a boy was a bit more morbid, but Damian had his own morbid streak that neither of them acknowledged. This might Damian’s own way of indulging it.

“Is Damian still awake?” Bruce asked around mouthfuls of Alfred’s carefully cooked meal, quickly trying to shovel the rest of the food on his plate into his mouth.

Alfred frowned down at Bruce. “He was in his room on his computer, the last I saw him. Sir, if you’re not going to taste my meals, let me know and I won’t put quite so much effort into flavoring them.”

“I did taste it,” Bruce grumbled, wiping his mouth on the corner of his napkin after he polished off the rest of his plate. “It was delicious, as always. Thanks, Alf,” Bruce threw over his shoulder before ducking out of the dining room and into the hall.

The older man sighed heavily, but a smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. “Boys will be boys, I suppose,” he sighed as he gathered up his master’s empty plate and cut and carried them over to the sink.

Bruce moved down the silent hallway toward the door that belonged to Damian’s room. From beyond the soundly shut door, Bruce could hear the quiet tapping of fingers on a keyboard. Bruce rapped his knuckles on the door and the tapping stopped.

“Damian?” he called. “May I come in?”

There was a shuffling on the other side of the door and the distinct sound of heavy items being shifted and then the door was opening to reveal a petulant face staring up at him.

Bruce often found himself thinking that Damian’s appearance was somewhat unfortunate. The boy was all whipcord muscle strung under dusky brown skin. He was somewhat short for his age, but made up for his size with a loud voice and an obstinate approach to everything. He sometimes wondered if Damian might be able to present a nicer demeanour if he ever ventured to use an expression other than a scowl at all times. Damian had a short pushed up nose, thin lips and thick dark brows over large dark blue eyes. On the surface, his face looked much like Bruce’s own when he was that age, but the similarity was lost when the scowl that was eternally etched into Damian’s face was taken into account.

“Father?” Damian responded, suspicion thick in his voice.

“I saw your bags by the door. I was hoping to talk to you one more time about accompanying the investigation,” Bruce explained. He found that being straightforward and as detached as possible seemed to work best with Damian.

“Tt,” Damian clicked his tongue, a strange verbal tick he had exhibited since a child. “I don’t know why we have to keep going over this. No, allow me to correct myself. I don’t understand why you are so opposed to me accompanying them.”

“May I come in?” Bruce asked diplomatically, not wanting to get into an argument in the hall where Alfred could hear them.

Damian squinted up at his father, suspicion still painted in broad strokes over his face, before he relented and stepped back to let Bruce inside.

Damian’s room was orderly, as usual. The walls were filled with bookshelves. The bookshelves were filled with hard backed classics in various languages arranged in alphabetical order on the shelves. His bed was made and his laptop was turned on at his desk, the only light illuminating the room. But, it was locked, a blinking cursor waiting for a password.

“May I?” Bruce asked, gesturing at Damian’s bed.

Damian shrugged, closing his eyes briefly and twisting his mouth to show his indifference.

Bruce sat.

“Damian, I wish you would level with me about why you really want to go to the Manor,” Bruce said, exasperation weighing down his words.

Damian’s posture stiffened visibly, though he was obviously trying not to give away any tells. “Parapsychology is a fascinating field of study just finding its own feet among the other reputed sciences,” Damian rattled off in defense.

“Damian,” Bruce snapped sharply, his own scowl mirroring his son’s.

Damian harrumphed and tapped his foot nervously, his hands flexing in and out of fists at his sides. “You never let anyone go there!” he eventually blurted out.

“It’s an old dusty house full of bad memories. There’s no reason for anyone to go there,” Bruce recited.

Damian clicked his tongue again. “Until now?” he shot back.

Bruce closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He couldn’t afford to yell at his son. Not only were the walls thin and the sound would carry. He was also far too exhausted to wade into an all out argument with Damian that night. Arguing with Damian was more of a physical test than many of the exercises he put himself through every day. And, Bruce put himself through rigorous excercises every day.

“Yes. Until now,” Bruce replied.

Damian seemed to waver, unsure how to attack next.

“Then, obviously, I’d like to take this opportunity to finally see it, our stately family home, before it is gone forever,” Damian replied, crossing his his arms over his chest. He glared down at Bruce, as if daring him to imply he could be insincere in this desire.

Bruce sighed heavily. “I’ll just lodge my complaint now, that I think this a bad idea,” he said, rubbing a rough hand over his face.

“I can’t say I understand your reluctance to let me go, but rest assured that your concerns have been heard and considered,” Damian replied primly, actually literally tilting his nose into the air a little more as he said it.

Bruce sighed again as he looked at his son. Talia had always told him that Damian was a prince. He had always considered it as a turn of phrase, a sign of affection for her only child. Obviously, judging by Damian’s constant attitude, while Damian was in her custody it was much more than a turn of phrase.

“Thank you for your time, all the same,” Bruce said stiffly, standing up slowly and moving toward the door. He hated talking to Damian the same way he did his board of directors. It grated against every nerve he had, but he knew the boy just reacted better to it.

“You’re welcome,” Damian replied, moving back toward his desk and taking a seat there. Bruce tried to control his temper even as Damian very obviously waited for Bruce to leave the room before putting in his password.

Bruce leaned against the door after he shut it behind him. He resisted the urge to bang his head back against the wood. Damian would definitely hear that.

“The young master could not be persuaded?” Alfred asked, silhouetted by the light from the kitchen as he stood in the doorway.

Bruce gave the butler a tired look.

“I can’t say that I’m surprised,” Alfred replied sympathetically. “Think of it this way, Master Bruce. At least you’ll have a weekend to yourself for a change.”

Bruce glanced up at the ceiling in supplication. “Yeah,” he rumbled. “At least there’s that.”

* * *

Jason flopped down onto the mattress beside Tim. The both of them were breathing heavily, their chests heaving in time with one another, their skin sticky with sweat, spit and other body fluids. And, let’s not forget, that the two of them were nude and flushed a pretty pink.

“Wow,” Jason breathed, staring up at Tim’s ceiling and running a hand through his hair. There was a poster of a detailed diagram of a low fidelity camera taped to his ceiling among glow in the dark stars and a few smaller posters of the periodic table and other informative things that Jason either didn’t recognize or didn’t bother to focus on.

“Yeah,” Tim gasped between breaths, his eyes closed and his head tilted back.

“Do you, like,” Jason flapped his hand in the air, but stopped quickly. It was too much effort. “Work out or something?” he finished lamely.

Tim turned toward Jason, opening his eyes and frowning at the other man. Jason raised his eyebrows.

“Oh!” Tim exclaimed, his eyebrows shooting up in realization. “Right! No. I mean, yes. Yeah, I work out. But, the, uh, flexibility is from the yoga classes that Steph drags me to every morning.”

Jason’s mouth quirked up in one corner as he watched Tim get more flustered as he tried to explain himself. It was cute to watch. “You guys are pretty close, huh?” he asked.

“We used to date in high school,” Tim hesitantly elaborated. “It didn’t work out, but we stayed friends after.”

“Really?” Jason said, surprised. “I had thought you were... Well, you know,” he finished awkwardly, grimacing at his own faux paux.

“I am!” Tim replied quickly. “That was sort of, ah, the problem,” he explained, blushing.

Tim looked away, embarrassed. Jason had trouble averting his eyes.

In the illumination from the streetlights through Tim’s blinds and the glow from the plastic stars on his ceiling, he looked very attractive. All of the hard lines of his face and anatomy were smudged into a soft shape. Jason started to catalogue him. His eyes were a shockingly pale color of blue. His skin was pale, but not as pale as Jason’s. He could see hints of a tan line over Tim’s hips were he had obviously gotten a little sun over the summer. He was very thin, but also moderately muscled, a few moles dotting his shoulders and forearms.

“I’m, uh,” Tim stuttered, “I’m going to go get something to drink. Do you want anything?” Tim asked, sitting up and not quite looking Jason in the face.

Jason sat up quickly, his head swimming a little at the sudden rush of blood to his head. “I’ll go,” he offered quickly.

“Are you sure?” Tim asked doubtfully, but he was already lying back down in the bed.

“Sure I’m sure,” Jason responded. “I saw the kitchen on my way in. What do you want?” he asked.

“I have a shake in the fridge,” Tim responded slowly, his eyelids fluttering a little as he fought off another wave of exhaustion.

“Got it! Be right back,” Jason said. Before he left, he leaned forward and hovered over Tim for a moment, his eyes checking Tim’s for any sign of reproach, before he let himself dip forward and press his lips to the other man’s for a brief moment.

Tim’s eyes slid shut and a small sigh escaped him as Jason sat back up. He left the room quietly and was thumping down the stairs by the time Tim opened his eyes again.

Jason walked down the stairs naked into Tim’s kitchen. It was Jason’s understanding that Tim shared the apartment with three other students, one being Steph and the other two being a pair of siblings that both had plans for that Friday night. So, there wasn’t much danger of being mistaken for a sexual deviant breaking into their apartment.

Jason found their kitchen snuggled into the back of the house without any issue. He moved to the fridge and pulled it open. He saw Tim’s aforementioned shake pushed toward the back. He pulled it out and stared at the label. It was a health shake, the liquid inside green and thick. The label touted its high level of iron and vitamins. Jason pulled a face.

So, maybe Tim was a bit of a health nut. That wasn’t a bad thing.

He sat the shake on the counter beside the fridge and grabbed a bottle of water for himself. Closing the fridge door, Jason cracked the seal on the plastic bottle and tipped it up into his mouth. Turning around, his eyes quickly took note of two figures standing in Tim’s kitchen, their forms silhouetted by the streetlights out back.

Steeling himself, Jason sat the water bottle down beside Tim’s shake and stared at them, his expression challenging.

One of the figures was tall, thin and willowy. He couldn’t quite make out colors, but he thought its hair was dark and that it was wearing some kind of oversexed satin dress with a high cut up the thigh and a low off the shoulder neckline. It was wearing heels and dripping dirty water steadily onto the tile floor. The figure beside the tall apparition was much smaller, the size of a small child. This one obviously used to be a little girl, judging by her short dress and little black and white saddle shoes. Her hair was tied into pigtails. She held the other figure’s hand in her own and what looked like a soggy teddy bear in the other.

“What’s this supposed to be? The welcome wagon?” Jason snorted, sneering at the two unmoving figures standing a few feet away from him. The sound of water dripping off of their bodies and into the steadily growing puddle on Tim’s floor was the loudest sound in the room.

“No, no, don’t tell me!” Jason exclaimed, waving his hands in mock surrender. “Let me guess! You’re here to deliver a warning,” Jason said flatly, giving the two of them an unimpressed look.

“Listen, ladies,” Jason said, sighing and picking up his water bottle. He took a swig of the water and continued to stare the apparitions down. “I suggest you save your warnings for someone who isn’t fucking broke.”

Outside, the sound of rain started and then quickly got louder. Jason frowned and looked toward the nearest window. Outside, the night was quiet. He couldn’t see any hint of rain.

When Jason turned back to regard his two uninvited guests, they were significantly closer to him than they were before. Now, a scant foot separated him from the other two. And with the new proximity came a gained clarity.

The woman and child’s face were horribly disfigured. Their skin was wrinkled and warped like swollen paper left out in the rain. Their skin was white as parchment too, except around their lips and the deep sunken in holes where white unseeing eyes regarded him. There, the skin went from blue to purple to black. They were both soaked, their eyes fixed on on him despite their milky white gaze.

Jason held completely still, his breath freezing in his chest. The woman’s breath rattled across his face. It smelled faintly of vanilla.

“It’s an invitation,” she breathed, her voice somehow beautiful and seductive where it emanated from her mangled lips.

And, just like that, they were gone.

The sound of rain ceased, the figures disappeared as if Jason had blinked his eyes and they took their puddle with them.

Jason leaned heavily against the cold surface of the fridge and took a ragged breath, allowing his eyes to close and his head to fall backward with a thump.

“So much for it being inactive,” Jason muttered to himself.


	4. Vicki

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No new tags. Thanks so much for the kudos and reviews so far! You guys are awesome. ;3

Vicki drove recklessly through the early morning traffic of Gotham city. Despite it being Saturday and the sky only starting to tinge with dawn, the streets were still clogged with cars and buses, the thoroughfares sluggish and the sidewalks dotted with pedestrians walking here and there with their heads tilted down.

The fuming red head cut dangerously around other cars and laid on her horn until she could get around others. She made record time getting across uptown and then across the bridge out of Gotham and toward the coast. As she sped across the coastal highway northward toward Wayne Manor, her conversation with Bruce last night replayed in her head.

> __
> 
> “Vicki, you can’t keep doing this,” Bruce hissed after hauling her bodily out of the lecture hall.
> 
> __
> 
> Vicki yanked her arm out of Bruce’s large calloused hand and gave him the kind of glare that made smaller men flinch. She yanked her blouse back into place and brushed her hair over her shoulder before replying.
> 
> __
> 
> “I can’t imagine what you mean, Mr. Wayne,” she replied, dripping with a false innocence. “I can’t report on the intentions and investments of one of the most powerful men in Gotham?” she asked, her voice thick with sarcastic surprise.
> 
> __
> 
> Bruce looked back at her blankly, his expression carefully controlled. But, she could see the roiling emotions behind his eyes.
> 
> __
> 
> “Vicki, this is my private life. This is something I’m doing for my own closure. Don’t you think it’s in poor taste to invade that?” Bruce shot back, his voice rising slightly at the end, betraying his own emotion.
> 
> __
> 
> Vicki scoffed to hide the slight twist in her stomach that those words brought. This time last year, she wouldn’t have so much as glanced sideways at a story like this. But, this wasn’t last year and she couldn’t afford to be as discerning as she had been then.
> 
> __
> 
> “This investigation is going to be the deciding point as to whether or not the stately Wayne Manor, one of Gotham’s oldest standing structures, remains standing. That is, if the gossip I hear is to be believed. I think it is most definitely in the public’s interest to know what goes on here,” Vicki returned, sniffing primly.
> 
> __
> 
> Bruce’s expression contorted in rage for a moment before he forced himself back under his own rigid control. “Vicki,” he snapped, his hand slashing across the air, “Quite frankly, this is none of your or anyone else’s business. Wayne Manor is my family home. This is the investigation that I’m funding personally, not a cent of company money has been used here. Wayne Manor isn’t even in the city of Gotham. You’re just desperate for a story!”
> 
> __
> 
> Vicki squawked in indignance, but Bruce held up a hand for silence.
> 
> __
> 
> “I understand that desperation, but I hope you don’t think that what we shared between us in the past affords you any kind of liberties when it comes to me,” Bruce gritted out.
> 
> __
> 
> Vicki stared at him, her eyebrows raised in shock even as his were lowered over blue eyes glittering with determination.
> 
> __
> 
> Before she was aware of what she was doing, her hand swung out hard at his face, the slap loud and resounding in the otherwise silent hallway.
> 
> __
> 
> The two of them continued to stand staring at each other, Vicki’s chest heaving with gasps of breath, her hand still in the air, her eyes wide and frenzied. Bruce stood much the same as before, his hands in fists by his side and a distinct red mark growing on his cheek.
> 
> __
> 
> Without another word, Vicki turned on her heel and ran down the hall to the exit.
> 
> __

Vicki clenched her teeth as the emotional bile of shame and defeat hit the back of her throat. Backing down from Bruce had been the last thing she had ever wanted to do, but the man had perfected the art of cutting a person to the bone with a single well placed insult. Vicki still felt like her guts were pooled around her feet, the shame and depression that the truth of Bruce’s words had revealed a heavy pall over her mind.

Her heart was still thudding heavily in her chest, her face hot with shame as she pulled up to the front gates of Wayne Manor.

Last night, while driving home through tears of frustration, Vicki had made the decision to crash Bruce’s little psychic investigation. The Wayne family was highly respected in Gotham. It was one thing to whisper insinuations that the current Wayne family head believed in ghosts and paid exorbitant fees for swindler psychics to traipse around the family homestead and tell him that his mommy and daddy were still watching over him. It was quite another to run an article with photographic proof to back up that claim.

She pulled a heavy red pair of bolt cutters from her passenger seat as she stepped out of her little smart car. She had picked them up at a hardware store before leaving that morning and was glad to have them as she approached the gates. They appeared the be wrapped in chains.

As she marched forward, however, the gate and chains began to rattle. Vicki paused, her heart stuttering in her chest, worrying that someone might have seen her. That possibly Bruce or Barbara might have foreseen her meddling and were coming to greet her now. Vicki stared wide eyed as the gates slowly pulled themselves open, the chains rattling as they were pulled loose, dropping to the leaf strewn driveway once the gates were open.

Vicki cautiously returned the bolt cutters to her car, considering the open gates. The gates must have been automatic. Maybe they were more modern than they looked and would open for any car that drove up. Obviously, the chains were just for show. She thought that was a little careless, but maybe the Manor got more traffic than she thought and the convenience out weighed the risk.

Still a little doubtful, Vicki crawled back into her car and drove through the gates still standing patiently open. The gravel churned and the chains rattled as she drove over them.

As she drove forward, the house rose regally out of the overgrown vegetation all around it. The stone it was built out of was a pale gray, the windows dark, but reflecting back pale pinks and purples as the sun slowly rose in the east behind it. Huge weeping willows, twisting corkscrew, and ancient oak trees reached long spindly fingers toward the house’s windows and out over the old rutted gravel driveway. Vicki pulled her car under a particularly bent willow tree, the long weeping branches swinging shut behind her car so as to completely obstruct it from the view of anyone driving by.

She approached the house on foot from there. The gravel crunched under her sneakers. Leaves rustled slightly in the brisk early morning fall air. She passed a beautifully carved fountain standing in the middle of the round drive way. It was still now, green algae marking the places on the face of frolicking cherubic children where water used to flow and spit. The only water now was gathered in the base of the fountain, still and covered with a thick blanket of lilies and algae. As Vicki watched, a small green frog climbed on top of one of the lily pads and cocked a particularly cognizant eye in her direction.

It coughed out a deep croak and Vicki quickly hurried on.

The steps of the Manor were undiminished by time. They were made of a pale warm beige cement, carefully crafted curling black rails edging the sides until they reached the stone wall exterior. Moss and algae had begun to grow in the shadowed crevasses of the stairs, nature slowly encroaching on the monuments that man had built with his own two hands. But, the steps were still sturdy looking and Vicki climbed them with confidence.

The doors were huge wood monstrosities. They had large black iron lion heads with rings in their mouths as knockers and carved black iron handles with a button on the top for a latch. Vicki tried the doors, pushing and pulling, but they didn’t so much as rattle in their casings. She gave them a solid kick for her trouble.

“So much for the front door,” she sighed, running a hand through her thick red hair and staring unhappily at the unmoving double doors.

Vicki jogged down the front steps and then a little farther, before whirling around and checking the rest of the front of the house for any windows or doors that she might be able to reach. She didn’t see any.

“Back door it is,” Vicki muttered, taking toward the right of the building, intending to walk along the edge of the house until she saw a point of entry.

This soon turned out to be completely inadvisable. Tall hedges that had probably been closely cut and carefully manicured in the past now grew like large green sentries all along the exterior walls, preventing sight as well as entry. Vicki was forced to swing further into the wild gardens and forest surrounding the manor, long lacking maintenance let alone a simple pair of pruning shears.

Here and there she would find a path of stepping stones, a crumbling garden bench or what might have been a beautiful fish pond at one time. Thorny bushes, huge twisting tree trunks and long reaching vines had taken over much of the ground and rendered all paths and order nearly unrecognizable among the chaotic clash of nature.

Vicki was stepping cautiously over what might have been a small tumbled bridge when she heard the distinct snap of a twig somewhere behind her.

Vicki’s head swung around and her eyes surveyed the greenery around her. The leaves and branches she could see were still and unmoving. Still, she called out, “Hello!”

There was a long pause. The only sound she could hear was the rustling of leaves high above her. All else was silence.

Her face pulled into a grimace, Vicki soldiered on even though the feeling of a cold finger running down her spine dogged her. _‘It was just an animal,’_ she told herself, though she moved faster and checked the location of the manor on her left more often. The windows were still high up on the wall. She didn’t see any doors through the dense foliage.

“Vicki,” someone whispered.

The young journalist turned around quickly, almost stumbling over a protruding tree root in the process of trying to turn around as quickly as possible. Once again, nothing seemed to be moving in the greenery all around her. There were no further sounds, no movement among the trees or underbush.

But, that didn’t detract from the fact that Vicki was sure she had just heard someone whispering her name. She couldn’t have determined the gender or age of the voice, but the memory of it was clear in her mind.

The hairs on the back of her neck stood up and tears began to gather on her long lashes as she cast around for any kind of reasonable explanation. Maybe Bruce and his psychic friends were playing a trick on her? But, she hadn’t seen any cars and the chains had been wrapped around the gates when she had come in. Although, she supposed they too could have hidden their cars and replaced the chains after coming in. Or, she could be going mad, the sharp decline in her career and her stinging pride hurrying along the process.

Or, there could really be ghosts at Wayne Manor.

Strangling off a cry of fear before it could struggle out of her throat, Vicki turned and started running, crashing through the foliage all around her. She was running full tilt, as fast as the could through the overgrown yard toward the back of the house. Behind her, she felt almost sure she could hear the sound of someone following her, their footfalls covered up by the all the noise she herself was making.

She rounded the corner of the building and could see a pane glass enclosure rise above the riot of greenery, its panes of glass opaque in the pale light of the rising sun. She ran toward it, sure she could hear her own name whispering in the sound of crushed leaves and broken twigs.

There was a wrought iron door made of the same thick opaque glass as the rest of the addition to the Manor set into the northern side of the house. Vicki literally threw herself at it, the door opening in easily at her weight. The young woman fell to the cracked cement floor with a quiet ‘Oomph!’

In the aftermath, only the sound of her heavy breathing and her soft whine of pain filled the damp morning air.

Slowly, Vicki pushed herself up onto her elbows and then hands and twisted to look behind her out into the overgrown grounds of the estate. Pinkish dawn light illuminated the tall grass and twisted old trees. Dew shined where the light caught it. Vicki’s trail of destruction was clearly visible through the tall grass from the woods at the side of the house all the way to the door of the greenhouse.

Sniffing and feeling wretchedly stupid, Vicki pushed herself into a sitting position and rubbed her eyes and nose on the sleeve of her shirt. Her body was jittery with adrenaline, her heart beat still rabbit fast in her chest, but she was starting to think that she was letting all this talk of ghosts get the better of her.

Vicki stood on shaky knees and turned around again to look at the greenhouse she now found herself in. Unlike outside, everything inside the greenhouse was brown and dead. The leaves of plants, brown and withered, lay on the cracked and neglected cement floor. The skeletal forms of flowering trees reached up toward the sunlight. Dead papery weak ivy clung to the walls and the frames of the glass panes.

Faintly, Vicki heard a far away humming sound. Following it, she walked deeper into the greenhouse, the light somehow thick and viscous after struggling through the opaque glass that made up its walls. She walked slowly, her head swiveling from side to side, and finally sound the source of the buzzing tucked into the far corner of the greenhouse.

There, hanging from a twisted and dead tree, was a huge fat bee’s nest. The bees flew in circles around it and crawled sluggishly on every nearby surface. The milled around on the outside of it, occasionally flying in and out of the exit built into its bottom. They hummed and buzzed all around their nest, their bodies round and bulbous to match their hive.

Vicki frowned at the bee’s nest. She didn’t understand how they could possibly survive inside the greenhouse, where everything else was dead. What did they eat? How did they build their nest?

Unnerved, Vicki backed slowly away from the bees and their insistent buzzing.

She moved quickly in the opposite direction, away from the bees and toward where the greenhouse connected to the rest of the house. Since the door to the greenhouse was open, she hoped that she might have found the entrance that most people used. Maybe all the constant in and out traffic was what let the bees in in the first place? Vicki desperately hoped so.

As she suspected, there was a small plain door with a window set into the stone side of the house, exiting into the greenhouse. Vicki heaved a sigh of relief as she reached it, hoping that her ordeals outside would stop once she got inside and found a good hiding place to wait out Bruce and his psychics.

She stepped up the one step to the door and tried the knob. It jiggled in the door, but otherwise didn’t turn to allow her in. Growling in frustration, Vicki took the knob in both hands and turned and shook the knob violently. The whole door shook, loud convulsions against the doorframe. But, it stood its ground and wouldn’t allow Vicki inside.

Whining in the back of her throat and glad that no one was around to hear it, Vicki let her forehead fall forward against the glass fo the door. She needed to get inside and going back into the yard went against every fiber of her being.

Sighing, Vicki tried to muster her courage. She had to go back outside. There had to be another entrance somewhere, a back door or a cellar door or an open window or something.

She was just about to force herself to turn around and march herself back outside, when she heard the voice again. It was quiet, just a whisper against the shell of her ear. Her hair tickled her face as hot breath brushed against her skin.

“Vicki,” it said, the words formed like a caress.

Gasping, Vicki turned around quickly and looked around. But, just like before, the greenhouse was empty of anyone else but her. She could hear the faint buzzing of the bees from far away and the rustling of leaves brushing against one another outside. There was every indication that she was alone with herself.

Vicki’s gasping breaths began to form together into wracking sobs. Wetness gathered on her thick eyelashes and spilled onto her cheeks as she continued to look for and not find the source of the voice.

“What is going on here,” she warbled. “Who’s there!” she yelled desperately into empty and unresponsive greenhouse full of dead plants.

She expected to hear nothing, only her own echoing sobs coming back to her. Except that there was a response. A faint wheezing laugh. And, it came from right above her.

Eyes wide, tears streaming down her cheeks, her lower lip trembling, Vicki slowly tilted her head up.

And screamed.


	5. The Beginning

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No new tags! We get to see Tim in action in this chapter and find what little remains of Vicki.

Barbara leaned around Damian as she trundled another armload of equipment up the steps and into the Manor. This was her third trip and the surly pre-teen hadn’t so much as flicked an eye in her direction since she started. She hoped that she wasn’t ever so rude when she was his age, but maybe she was. She did remember that she had been quite a handful for a few years there.

The young professor had decided to set up her base in the parlor. She had pulled a few old long tables together along the edge of the room and carefully covered them with a thick tablecloth to protect them from scratches. She had stacked on top of them boxes of equipment: thermometers, people counters, proximity meters, various EVP recorders, full spectrum cameras, motion detectors, EMF meters, light grids, the list went on and on. If it was ever used to prove the existence of the supernatural, Barbara had taken it.

It was about mid-morning and she had her van nearly unloaded, no thanks to Damian. Bruce had dropped his son off that morning, looking equal parts apprehensive and apologetic as Damian marched past the both of them after a brief greeting and straight into the house. So far as she knew, Damian had dropped his stuff off in a bedroom he had already staked out as his own. Afterward, he had planted himself on the front steps, pushed a pair of earbuds into his ears, and started to scratch at a sketchbook while pointedly ignoring Barbara and everything else around him.

Barbara sighed as she came out the front door for the last time. She checked her watch, noting that it was just about time for her touted psychics to begin arriving.

As if she had summoned them herself, a car pulled up to the gate and rumbled down the rutted gravel driveway. It pulled up around the front and the driver rolled the window down before throwing a winning smile at her. Barbara found herself smiling warmly back despite herself.

“Hey, good morning!” Dick Grayson called, leaning out the window. “Should I park anywhere in particular?”

Barbara shrugged and noticed that Damian’s head had come up to regard the first arrival. “Park wherever, I guess. You’re the first one here, so just leave room for the others if you can.”

"Will do,” Dick replied, tipping a two fingered salute in her direction before pulling his car around the driveway until it was closer to the gate, but not yet in front of it. Barbara watched his tan sedan roll by and decided that it must be a rental. Firstly, it didn’t seem to match Dick’s personality. Secondly, the stickers taped to the back seat passenger window was a dead giveaway.

Dick was just stepping out of his car when another car rolled through the gates. This car was markedly smaller and rattier than Dick’s. It was dark blue, small, a two door, with chipped paint and a corny pink sunset license plate affixed to the front. As it pulled past her to park behind Dick’s car, she noted that there were a handful of fading and torn bumper stickers stuck to the rear end of the car. She was unsurprised when Steph stepped out of the driver’s side door followed closely by Tim in the passenger seat.

Steph waved at Barbara who smiled and waved back before bounding over to the steps. Tim and Dick followed at a more sedate pace, the two chatting with one another as they approached.

“Are we the first ones here?” Steph asked, coming to a halt in front of Barbara and obviously trying and failing to curb her energy.

“Dick beat you, but only by a hair,” Barbara replied, smiling at the other girl’s enthusiasm.

“Darn,” she enthused, snapping her fingers. “I knew I should have passed him on the bridge. He drives like a grandpa.”

“Hey,” Dick laughed. “Gotta be careful with the rental, you know?”

“Psh!” Steph laughed, “It’s your own fault for not getting the extra protection plan. Hey, who’s this?” Steph asked, smiling down at Damian who was watching the three newcomers closely.

Barbara cleared her throat and tried to keep the pained look off her face. “Everyone, this is Damian Wayne. He’s going to be staying the weekend with us. Damian, this is Richard Grayson, Stephanie Brown, and Timothy Drake.”

“Yes, I’m aware,” Damian sniffed, continuing to stare unblinkingly at the other three.

“Of course you are,” Barbara sighed. “You can ignore him, he’s just here to observe. As a learning experience,” Barbara added haltingly.

“Okay...” Steph said slowly, looking down at Damian as if he were a strange and threatening looking dog that she was debating whether to pet or not. “Anyway, we would have been here earlier, but somebody,” Steph emphasized, waggling her eyebrows and grinning widely, “had a _rough night_ , if you catch my drift. Isn’t that right, Timmy?” she teased, leaning forward and pulling his high necked t-shirt down to momentarily reveal a dark bruise on his otherwise light skin.

“Steph!” Tim squawked, jumping away from her and pulling his collar back up. “Not cool,” he growled.

The other girl didn’t take any notice, hiding her giggles behind neon green fingernails. Dick grinned wolfishly at Tim, who was looking flushed and angry at the laughing blond. Barbara did her best to hide her smirk behind her hand. It really wasn’t right for her to participate in the teasing of any of her students.

Luckily, she was saved from having to pretend much longer as her last two participants arrived, one in a yellow cab that stopped outside the gates and the other on a smooth rumbling motorcycle. Selina disembarked from her cab and pulled a decent sized suitcase from the trunk before sauntering through the gates. After the cab pulled away, Jason’s bike pulled in and he drove it slowly past Selina who wiggled her fingers at him in greeting.

Jason parked his bike by the steps and pulled off his red full face helmet to reveal a riot of messy hair that he quickly tried to tame back.

“Are we late?” he asked.

Barbara checked her watch again. “Just barely. It doesn’t matter, I’m just glad you’re all here,” Barbara said, smiling at all five of them.

“Timothy,” Barbara addressed the younger psychic, pulling a small handheld camera from her bag as she did so. Tim jumped slightly at his name, but seemed to bring himself back under control quickly. “If I could ask you to do the honor of making first contact,” Barbara explained, smiling as she brought the camera up and pointed it at Tim. A little red light on the front of the camera blinked steadily at him, indicating that it was recording.

“Sure,” Tim replied. “What were you thinking.”

“If you could just try the door handle and see what you get?” Barbara asked, keeping the camera trained on Tim as he nodded and came up the steps. She had left one of the double doors closed to try and keep some of the cold out. This is the door that Tim approached.

Barbara kept her eyes focused on the small display window that she had folded out of the recorder. The Tim on her screen took a deep breath, his shoulders rising and falling as his chest expanded and collapsed. He held his long thin fingers over the door handle, his breathing steady and his eyes closed. With telegraphed intention, Tim brought his hand down and wrapped his fingers around the carved handle. As soon as his hand was fully wrapped around the door handle, his whole body jerked as if he had been shocked.

Barbara heard shuffling behind her and heard Jason call Tim’s name, but ignored she ignored them. She kept her camera pointed at Tim, intent on capturing his interaction with the house.

On camera, Tim was frozen with his head tilted down and his shoulders shaking slightly. “I loved you,” he whispered faintly. Barbara barely heard him and she doubted that the mic on the camera picked it up. Cautiously, she stepped closer.

As she did so, Tim threw his head back and stared straight up. His already pale blue eyes looked even lighter, unfocused and shining with tears. His expression was one of betrayal and agony. “I loved you,” he said again, stronger this time even as his voice warbled with unspoken tears.

Everyone was still, she couldn’t hear the others so much as breathe in the morning air.

Tim’s head tipped forward again and came to rest against the door with a soft thump. Barbara creeped closer.

“Why?” he was whispering, his lips barely moving with the sound. “I loved you.”

“Tim!” Jason barked, panic sharp in his voice.

Tim jerked again, his body jumping similarly to how it had when he first connected to the house. He pulled away from the door and looked around, disorientation clear on his face. There were tears tracking their way down his cheeks.

Jason took the steps two at a time and reached for Tim. He brushed the pads of his fingers against the other man’s cheeks, smudging away his tears “God, are you okay?” he whispered.

Tim bat his hands away, looking surprised at the wetness he found as he roughly rubbed at his face.

“What did you see?” Dick asked, walking up the steps slowly and coming to stand behind Jason.

“I didn’t see anything,” Tim mumbled. He still looked confused. “Just darkness everywhere.”

“You were saying something,” Barbara said sternly, still keeping the camera tracked on Tim’s face.

Tim frowned back at her. “I didn’t say anything,” he argued, obstinance clear in his voice.

Everyone gathered around the door exchanged confused and worried glances, except for Damian whose sharp eyes were focused solely on Tim.

“I didn’t hear or say anything,” Tim said firmly. “All I saw was darkness. I felt weightless and cold. That’s it,” he snapped.

“Eerie,” Selina breathed.

“For real,” Steph agreed, looking visibly shaken.

Barbara snapped the display on the camera shut with a kind of finality. All eyes swiveled to her.

“Let’s get started, shall we?” she smiled.

* * *

“I was thinking we would start the tour here, in the solarium,” Barbara said, leading the way through the manor and toward the large kitchen tucked into the north west corner of the building. Her trail of psychics followed behind her silently. Dick first, then Selina, followed by Steph holding tight to Tim’s hand, being trailed by a concerned looking Jason and a frowning Damian.

Barbara pulled a ring of keys from her bag and used an old dark metal skeleton key to unlock the door in the kitchen. The tumblers rolled out of the way with a loud clack. She pulled the old wooden door, painted white, toward her. It opened with the faint squeal of rusty hinges.

She took the first few steps down into the solarium and then stopped and waited for the others to follow her. They filed out slowly and made a half circle around her without instruction. As they came out, each person’s head swiveled around to take in their surroundings. Barbara could imagine what each one of them were noticing and cataloging.

The solarium was large and, at one time, was probably breathtakingly beautiful. The glass was set into a black wrought iron frame. Once could easily see where stone and brick had marked out flower beds and gardens. The dry husks of huge beautifully shaped trees stood tall and silent in the pale half light streaming through the now dirty windows. What was probably once moist and healthy dirt was dry and dusty now. Spouting from the dead earth were the dried and withered remains of plants and bushes. A pall of death and decay had fallen over that place in particular.

“This is the solarium of Wayne Manor, sometimes called the greenhouse,” Barbara started explaining. “It was not in the original designs drawn up by Solomon Wayne. It was added at Katherine Wayne’s behest shortly before construction was completed on the Manor. She specifically requested that it be built off of the servant’s kitchen, which was unheard of at the time. She was a practical woman who wanted to be able to grow vegetables year round and therefore placed the greenhouse near the kitchen to make it easier to care for.”

Barbara slowly started to walk through the solarium, still talking, her hands moving vaguely as she continued to explain.

“Katherine Wayne allowed all the servants full access to the solarium. She called it her health room and encouraged staff and guests alike to relax in the wicker chairs and stone benches that she placed intermittently among the beds of flowers and vegetables,” Barbara explained. She stepped forward into a small corner of the solarium that still held a set of once white wicker chairs that were slowly coming apart. Hanging from the limb of a dead tree that reached out over the small sitting area was a silent and lonely bee’s nest.

Barbara frowned at it. She wondered if someone was playing a joke on her.

“Beatrice Baxter,” Barbara said slowly, still frowning up at the bee’s nest, “was one of the first people to die inside of Wayne Manor. She was a friend of Katherine Wayne. She came to visit shortly after the birth of Katherine’s first child. She especially enjoyed the solarium and expressed as much in her letters to Katherine and to others. One day, while sitting in the solarium and reading a small book of poetry, she was stung by a bee. She was later found dead with the book still in her lap by some passing servants. Her death was ruled an accident due to a severe case of anaphylactic shock.”

Barbara turned to look back at the others and they all had their eyes fixed unblinking on the beehive behind her.

“Is that, like, a prop or something?” Steph asked, staring nervously at the bee’s nest. It didn’t escape Barbara that she had tucked herself slightly behind Tim, who wasn’t looking much braver than her.

Barbara sighed and turned back to the nest to give it a glare. “No,” she said simply, her displeasure ringing in her voice. “It wasn’t here last week when I did my first walk through. I’m not sure how it got here.”

“Do you think someone’s messing with us?” Jason asked, his arms folded over his chest and his expression dark and forbidding.

Barbara sighed. “The investigation hasn’t been made public, so far as I’ve been able to keep it a secret. Mr. Wayne in particular doesn’t want this investigation to become public until he’s ready. I would like to hope it’s just a coincidence. Maybe I overlooked it when I was last here,” she added doubtfully. She was sure she would have noticed something like a beehive where Beatrice Baxter had reportedly died. But, she couldn’t be sure.

“I don’t think you missed it,” a sharp voice with the soft lilt of an accent rang out from the back of the group. Everyone turned to regard the young Wayne heir as he held up a small pink phone. “I think Todd’s assessment is closer to the truth.”

Striding forward, Barbara snatched the phone out of Damian’s hand and glared down at it. It was obviously a girl’s phone, the case pink with pale white polka dots on the back. The front was a flat black screen. Barbara pushed the lock button, then held it down when nothing happened. The phone didn’t turn on.

“Where did you find this?” Barbara snapped, holding the phone up to Damian.

Damian glared at her, but tipped his chin to his left indicating a small black bag lying on its side and abandoned on a nearby path.

Quickly, Barbara grabbed the bag and pulled it open. Inside there was a small make up bag, a packet of mints, a wallet and ... a press badge. Barbara stared down in horror at the hawty smiling face of Vicki Vale, her name printed neatly above the typeface words ‘GOTHAM GAZETTE’. 

“Why...” Barbara began, rubbing the tips of her fingers against her forehead where she could feel a pressure beginning to build. “What in the world is she doing here?” she asked and knew that her voice sounded strained and emotional.

She could hear steps approaching her and when she looked up, Dick was at her elbow looking concerned.

“I have to call Bruce,” she said, her eyes big and her mouth turned sharply down at the corners. Calling Bruce was the last thing she wanted to do. If he heard that Vicki Vale had actually broken into his family home due to the psychic investigation, he may call the whole thing off entirely.

“Hey, no,” Dick replied, placing large warm hands on her bowed in shoulders. He read the anxiety and defeat in her eyes and wanted immediately to fix it. “She has to be around here somewhere, right? She wouldn’t leave without all her stuff. I mean, she left her wallet, her phone, her _press badge_ ,” Dick emphasized.

“She probably got spooked and dropped it,” Selina added gently. Barbara felt the other woman’s gentle hand settle on the small of her back and blushed. She felt terrible to have the two of them comforting her. She was supposed to be the lead of the investigation

“If she’s still around, we’ll find her. Then, we’ll sit her down and have a long talk about the difference between journalistic ambition and breaking and entering,” Dick said cheerily, giving Barbara the full force of a smile that could easily power half of Gotham, it was so bright.

Barbara smiled hesitantly back at him and took a deep breath. After she did, she stood up a little straighter. She dropped Vicki’s badge and phone into her little black knock off purse.

“Thank you, both of you. You’re right, Dick,” she said. He smiled back at her. “We’ll continue with the tour. We’re bound to run into her eventually and when we do I can really give her a piece of my mind.”

“That’s the spirit,” Selina said, smiling at Barbara.

Barbara tucked the bag under her arm and started to lead the way back to the kitchen. “Let’s go upstairs, everybody. I still have a lot to show you.”


	6. The Tour

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No new tags. Thanks again for the comments and kudos! You guys are the bee's knees. :3

Barbara had to lift the patio door up off of its swollen doorjamb to push it open. It squealed and groaned as she forced it to open, flakes of dried and warped white paint chipping away as the door scraped against its frame.

Stepping down onto the cracked cement patio, Barbara took a moment to survey her surroundings. The cement patio was huge, stretching along the back side of the Manor and edged with low brick and cement walls. The stone and cement was cracked, ivy, grass and moss sprouting up in every soft moist corner or crevasse they could find.

Barbara tucked her keyring back into her bag and walked forward until she was stepping down crumbling steps and into the overgrown grass jungle that was once an impeccably groomed lawn. The shuffle of feet behind her assured her that the others were following in her wake.

She came to a stop in front of a degrading fountain and turned around with her arms thrown wide. She smiled widely at the range of faces coming up to stand around her.

"Welcome to the grounds of the stately Wayne Manor!” she announced loudly. Nearby, a few birds took off from a tree, startled and chirping angrily at her as they flew a safe distance away.

“It’s a dump,” Damian said flatly, arms crossed over his chest as he sneered at the overgrown lawn around him.

“It’s certainly seen better days,” Selina agreed, her voice wry as she carefully moved the long limb of a thorn bush out of her way with a delicate grip.

“I’m sure it’s hard to imagine now, but Wayne Manor had the largest and most well kept grounds of any mansion for many years. Even after other wealthy families began to build in the land in and around Wayne Manor, they never surpassed it for sheer size when it came to land,” Barbara said proudly, turning around to look at the wild riot of trees and plants that were growing all around her.

“I’d like you to try and picture this area as it once was. A verdant and carefully maintained lawn for the patio to look out on. There were rose and forsythia bushes dotted here and there. The centerpiece was this fountain behind me,” Barbara said, turning to regard it again. “You may recognize it from yesterday.”

“It’s the fountain that Lucy Wayne was found in,” Tim said quietly, his eyes were affixed to the statue of a woman standing at the head of the fountain. The statue was of a beautifully proportioned woman wrapped in a roman style robe, her wavy hair tucked into a bun at the nape of her neck. Her face was hidden behind her hands, her shoulders hunched in frozen sorrow. Tim’s eyes looked haunted as he stared at the statue, as if he was still seeing the image of Lucy Wayne floating face down in the fountain behind his eyes. Steph, sensing his unease, pressed a little closer to his side.

“That’s exactly right,” Barbara replied. “This fountain was commissioned by Allen Wayne himself shortly after the manor was built. Other than that, I could find no more information about the fountain. I don’t know who the artist of the statue is, I don’t know who decided on the subject matter, or even if the statue was added before or after the actual fountain. Katherine Wayne wanted to destroy the fountain after Lucy was found in it, but Allen stood opposed to destroying it. After some time, as their grief started faded, neither of them brought it up again.”

“What did people think?” Dick asked. “I mean, at the time. What did people think happened to her?”

“Oh, well,” Barbara sighed and cast her eyes up as she tried to remember all of the conspiracy theories she had read about while doing her research. “Initially, the maid was suspected. Everyone was convinced that she must have been paid by somebody to spirit the girl away. The police interrogated her with the kind of brutality usually not paid to women during that time. After they released her, she had three broken fingers, a broken wrist, and a broken nose. She had pretty much convinced the police and anyone who had seen her after the interrogation that she didn’t know what happened to Lucy.”

Barbara saw most of her guests wince at the mention of the woman’s injuries. Except for Damian, who continued to watch Barbara impassively.

“After the nursemaid was cleared, there were a lot of people who thought it might have still been an inside job. Maybe the maid didn’t have anything to do with it, but another servant that Lucy knew or trusted could have lead her away. Still, a few people thought she might have run off on her own. Maybe she had stashed snacks and food in a tree or some hiding place? Then, one night, while playing in the fountain, her dress had become heavy and drug her down or she had fallen asleep and drowned.”

“Did anyone suggest it might have been the curse?” Jason asked, scowling down at the murky water in the fountain.

“What curse?” Dick asked turning to Jason.

“Most people in Gotham believe that the Wayne family is cursed,” Selina answered for Jason, rolling her eyes to express what she thought of that. “It’s an old story.”

“There were some people who believed it was related to the curse,” Barbara responded. “But, that talk was mostly accredited to spiritualists and the superstitious. More than anything, it was a mystery! One that was both tragic and titillating. For those who remember it, it remains one of the great mysteries of Gotham.”

“Wonderful, very interesting,” Jason snarked. “I’m amazed we don’t print that shit out and hand it out to tourists at bus stations. But, it is sort of morbid. And, this is coming from the guy who sees dead people. So, can we move on?” Jason asked, looking uncomfortable.

Barbara started to reach for her camera. “Is there anything you’d like to share with us for the sake of the investigation?” she asked Jason.

“No,” Jason bit out, his lip curling slightly at the suggestion.

Barbara suppressed a sigh and pulled her hand out of her bag. She clapped her hands in front of her and smiled at the ranging expressions of disinterest and disconsolation. She smiled brightly.

“In that case, let’s move right along!”

* * *

“What is this place?” Steph asked in wonder as she ran up and down the strange hallway.

Barbara smiled happily as she followed behind her. “It’s called ‘The Diminishing Hallway’. It’s one of the stranger additions to the house made by Allen Wayne.”

The hallway was made up of a rich dark red wood. The floors were covered with a thick dark red carpet, the walls paneled and the ceiling also made of wood, but with extravagant arches painted with gold paint trimming the edges every few feet. The fun started when one started to walk forward through this seemingly endless hall only to notice that the ceiling was getting lower and the walls were getting closer together. The hallway created the optical illusion that it was much longer than it actually was.

Dick was grinning widely as he ducked under one of the ornate arches. “This is so crazy. It’s like a fun house!” he exclaimed, looking toward Barbara and smiling brightly as if it was gift she had given him specifically.

Barbara felt her stomach do a little flip. Her face was warm as she smiled back at him.

“Why build such a frivolous thing?” Damian asked from somewhere near her elbow. Barbara looked down to see the young boy frowning in disapproval at the adults walking and running up and down the hallway.

“At the time, I think most people just thought it was a fun or exorbitant way for Allen to spend his father’s money. Although, historians now think that this hallway and the strange rooms like it may be a reflection of Allen Wayne’s mental state at the time of the construction of Wayne Manor,” Barbara explained frankly.

“Tt,” Damian clicked his tongue, his sneer deepening slightly.

Barbara sighed and decided to continue to ignore Damian as much as she could. “Okay, everybody! Gather round!” she called, moving toward the middle of the hallway.

Slowly, the rest of her contingent gathered around her, Dick and Jason stooping slightly due to the low ceiling.

“I wanted to show you the hallway first, mostly because it’s a lot of fun and really strange. But, also to point out that this is the location of the disappearance of Katherine Wayne,” Barbara said.

A few heads started to swivel around to take in the hallway anew.

“She just disappeared, right?” Steph asked curiously. “Like, she was just walking down the hall and no one ever saw her again?”

“Correct,” Barbara responded, nodding. “She was reportedly in some kind of a trance and didn’t react to the servant girl who greeted her.”

“Does this hallway go anywhere? Is there an exit in the direction she was walking?” Tim asked, frowning slightly, his brows coming together.

“There is, actually,” Barbara said, walking further down the hall. She crouched slightly to move under the steadily lowering arches until she found the panel in the wall that she was looking for. Giving it a push, it clicked and then popped back out at her.

She pulled the false panel open and stepped aside to let the others through.

Tim was the first one step through the hidden door and into the room beyond.

“Whoa,” he said, his voice awed and a little muffled in the hallway.

The others moved to step in behind him and Barbara followed after all of them were through.

Inside the room that Barbara had led them too was an office with all the modern fixtures that any office at the time of the manor’s construction would have had. There were pendant lights situated above heavy wood desks. On the desks were ink blotters, typewriters and old mechanical calculators with large levers attached to their sides. Each desk had a desk lamp with a green shade. There were a few palm plants tucked into the corners of the room and dark green carpet runners placed between the aisles of desks. The extraordinary thing about the office was that everything was upside down.

The desks were on the ceiling, the blotters and machines affixed to their surface. Chairs sat on the ceiling at imperfect angles to their desks. The pendant lights stood straight up from the floor on long pipes. Opaque windows were set along their feet, what would have been high up on the wall if the room were right side up. A false light was set behind the frosted glass to give the impression that the windows looks outside.

“This guy missed his calling, really,” Dick breathed. “Fun houses.”

Jason pushed one of the lights and watched it slowly wave backward and forward in place. “I’ll never understand rich people,” he muttered.

“Couldn’t Katherine have just exited the Manor?” Tim asked slowly, as he walked cautiously around the desks hanging above his head. “I mean, if there was an exit in the hallway, couldn’t she have just up and run?”

“She could have. It’s possible, but not probable,” Barbara sighed. “She was an older woman and she was recognizable to most people in the area. If she wanted to disappear, she would have had to travel very far away or laid very low for the rest of her life. There were no events around the time of her disappearance to act as a stressor and make her run. She had no family left alive she could have gone to live with. She did have friends overseas, but why run away all of a sudden? It’s about as mysterious as Lucy’s death, really.”

“This place is sort of freaking me out,” Selina whispered to Barbara, crouching close by the red head and staring with big eyes at the heavy pieces of furniture on the ceiling. “Where’s the exit?” she asked.

“It’s right over here,” Barbara said, smiling apologetically at Selina. Taking Selina by the hand, she led her through the aisle of desks on the ceiling and over to another false panel in the wall, this one was set up to look like one of the false windows set along the wall. Barbara pushed it open and paused before stepping inside.

“Oh, no!” Selina moaned. “This room is way worse,” she cried.

With wide eyes, Barbara stepped over the threshold of the doubly false window and into a huge cavernous space. The walls were lined with tall bookshelves, easily reaching over ten feet high and filled with the leather bound spines and worn stamped lettering of old thick books. The ceiling was a gently curving half sphere, its ceiling painted with fluffy clouds and flying birds, a false sky reaching high above their heads. Hanging from the center of the room was a huge shining chandelier, sparkling with beautifully cut pieces of glass. The eerie part of the room was that the floor was a mirror, reflecting its own reflection back at itself. It looked as if Barbara was walking on nothing.

“What is this place?” she breathed.

She heard footsteps behind her and then Dick’s deep voice chuckling, his voice echoing in the cavernous space. “This place just keeps getting better and better,” he said, sounding excited and impressed in equal turns.

“I am definitely not going in there! That is too creepy,” Barbara heard Selina saying from outside the room.

“It’ll be okay, Ms. Kyle,” she heard Tim tell her. “We’ll hold onto you. Look, the others are all able to walk on the floor without a problem.”

“I’ve never seen this place before,” Barbara said, turning her wide eyes back on the group of psychics carefully easing their way into the room. “It’s not on any of the plans.”

“I’ve seen it before,” Damian replied with none of his usual sound of superiority. His eyes were wide, the frown wiped from his face as he looked around the room in wonder. “I remember coming here when I was small. I was afraid to go inside. I thought I would fall in.”

“A completely reasonable assumption,” Selina muttered, clutching tightly to Tim’s arm as Steph smiled and patted her on her back.

“Wait. What do you mean it’s not on any of the plans?” Jason asked, squinting in disbelief at Barbara.

“I’m not lying!” she squawked, spinning around and around as she looked at the library that had no right to exist at all. “I’ve looked over all the plans, every single one that was submitted over the years and there were a lot of them, I assure you. This isn’t on any of them. That door is supposed to open out into the north hallway.”

“How is that possible?” Jason snapped.

“I don’t know!” Barbara snapped back.

“Hey, guys,” Steph called out cautiously.

Everyone turned to look at her. She was standing directly below the chandelier, slowly standing from a crouch with something held in her hands. As she turned around, Barbara saw that she had a large expensive looking camera clutched in her hands.

“I think someone got here before us,” Steph said, frowning down at the camera in her hands.

Barbara hurried over. “Vicki?” she asked, looking at the camera herself.

Steph flipped the camera over and on the bottom written on a piece of tape were the words ‘Property of V. Vale’ in loopy feminine script.

Barbara cussed colorfully and spun around, a hand pressed to her forehead.

“None of this makes any sense,” Jason huffed. “Not only do we have magical phantom rooms that were never recorded on any plans, we also have some crazy reporter girl running around the mansion dropping her shit behind her like fucking breadcrumbs!” Jason threw his hands in the air.

“Come on, guys,” Dick said, holding his hands out in front of him. “Let’s try to keep our heads here,” he started to say. But, as he mustered up whatever speech he was getting ready to unleash, a strange light started to emanate from the glass beneath Steph’s feet.

Squealing, Steph jumped back and ran the few feet back to where most of the others were gathered closer to the door. They all watched with wide eyes as the light built and built along with a strange whispering sound, similar to what you might expect to hear if a large number of voices were talking at once very quietly so that no one word could be separated out from the other.

As the light and sound built, it seemed to also slowly rise from the mirrored floor to build a column of ghostly light in the center of the room. It couldn’t have measured more than four or five feet in height. Buried in the swirling and ever changing complexities of light, the image of a small person, a little girl, began to appear.

“Okay, you guys can see this, right?” Jason whispered, as the sound and light seemed to plateau.

“Hell to the yeah,” Steph whispered back, still clutching Vicki’s camera in her hands.

Barbara fumbled in her bag to pull out her handheld camera. While she did so, Damian began to slowly walk forward, his eyes fixed on the apparition in the middle of the room. She turned her camera toward him momentarily, just in time to see Dick snap out of his stupor too late to grab Damian by the back of his shirt and haul him backward.

“Damian,” Barbara said from behind the camera. “Step away from it, please.”

Damian either didn’t hear her or just ignored her. The whispering seemed to become louder as he got closer.

“Kid!” Jason barked, starting to stride forward until Tim latched himself onto his arm and held him back. “Get away from that thing!” he yelled.

Still, Damian didn’t seem to notice or pay any heed to Jason’s sharp voice. He continued to put one foot in front of the other. As he got closer, he reached out, his thin arm reaching toward the light, his fingertips brushing against it even as it seemed to strain toward him.

With a harried yelp from Steph, the mirror library was suddenly filled with the sound of a camera flashing, its shutter loud and its flash blinding. Steph held the camera up in front of her face like a warding charm, her own face averted and her eyes squeezed shut even as she continued to press the button for the shutter.

In the middle of the room, the thing screeched and and writhed. In a bright flash of otherworldly light, it disappeared.

As soon as it was gone, Dick rushed forward and grabbed Damian by his upper arm, dragging him backward.

“What were you thinking?” he snapped. “This isn’t a game! You absolutely should not have tried to engage that thing.”

“It knew my name,” Damian rasped. His eyes stared vacantly at the spot where the apparition had once been. “It called my name like it knew me.”

Dick frowned and looked up, exchanging a worried look with Jason.

“It didn’t know you,” Jason said, roughly grabbing Damian by the upper arm and giving him a little shake. The boy frowned slightly, looking confused, but offended. The familiar expression on Damian’s face calmed Barbara somewhat. “They’ll try anything to make you engage with them. Don’t,” Jason said shortly.

Damian frowned and looked down, his expression communicating that he was feeling properly chastised.

Barbara took a deep breath and smiled a wobbly smile back at the others. “Is everyone okay?” she asked.

She got a handful of a nods and few vocal affirmatives, everyone still looking a little shaken.

“Good. How about lunch?”


	7. The Party

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No new tags. Alcohol remains a tag for this chapter. There is also the cameo appearance of another character!
> 
> As always, I appreciate and look at all the views, kudos and comments that I get and really appreciate all of them. Thanks, everybody!
> 
> NOTE: This chapter has been edited slightly from its initial post! A nice commenter pointed out that Damian is actually vegetarian in comic book canon, not Tim. So, I've edited this chapter to reflect that.

Jason slapped a generous amount of ham onto his roll and topped it with a thick slice of american cheese. Once the sandwich looked sufficiently thick, he squirted some mustard onto the top and flipped the roll closed to complete the sandwich. He took a huge bite, easily taking out a quarter of the sandwich. The meat was soft and juicy, the cheese sharp, and the mustard bity.

“These are pretty good,” Jason commented around the food in his mouth. A few other people with full mouths hummed their agreement where they were sitting around him on the odd arrangement of old couches and armchairs.

Damian harrumphed quietly from the armchair he had tucked himself into. There was a paper plate with a few sticks of celery, two baby carrots and a small dollop of ranch on it next to him. It was mostly untouched. He was pouting expertly from his corner of the room, his knees tucked up in front of him and an accusatory stare pointed out at the rest of them.

“I’m sorry again about the food, Damian,” Barbara said, wincing at herself. She had asked all of her psychics about any dietary restrictions or other allowances she might have to make for them. However, she had completely forgotten to ask those same questions about her youngest attendee. “I can’t believe your father didn’t tell me you are a vegetarian,” Barbara said again.

“Tt,” Damian clicked his tongue in either annoyance or dismissal. “Father doesn’t take my self-imposed dietary restrictions very seriously,” he replied.

Barbara frowned back at Damian. She supposed she could understand that, as someone who had also been a teenager who had made many decrees to her family that had largely been ignored.

“Are all of you about done with your lunch?” Barbara asked the rest of the group.

She got a handful of hesitant affirmatives around the room.

“You don’t have to stop picking, but if you don’t mind I’ll pick up with the rest of the tour,” she explained.

“There’s more?” Dick asked, his eyebrows raised and looking surprised to hear that there was more to learn about Wayne Manor’s history.

Barbara smiled at him deviously. “There are just two more spots I’d like to cover here on the first floor,” Barbara explained, holding up two fingers and wiggling them in what she hoped was an enticing manner.

“The first is actually right here, in the parlor,” she explained, walking toward the fireplace that was still, cold and inert. “It was right here,” she said, pointing up, “that Allen Wayne hung himself.” Six pairs of eyes looked up to where Barbara was pointing to stare at the exposed beams above her head. The ceiling suddenly appeared a lot more threatening than it had previously.

“Goodbye, appetite,” Steph said with a sigh as she sat her turkey and swiss sandwich aside. “I knew ye.”

“Why classify it as misadventure?” Tim asked in regards to the classification of Allen Wayne’s death. He turned around to stare curiously at Barbara, his meager meal already forgotten. “Did people really not know he was mentally unstable?”

“I don’t know if people didn’t know, exactly,” Barbara replied hesitantly. “More like, they carefully averted their eyes from the obvious,” Barbara demurred. “Allen was a celebrated architect. He could have moved to New York or back to his native Boston and probably made substantially more money, but he stayed in Gotham. Many of the people of Gotham had reason to humor him whenever his stories or jokes got a little out of hand.”

“Why don’t you tell us just how crazy he was?” Jason asked as he reclined on one of the antique lounges set around the room.

Barbara gave him an unimpressed look, but he just grinned brazenly back at her.

Sighing, Barbara caved. “Allen Wayne, as I mentioned previously, probably suffered from multiple mental diseases. One of them was detailed and vivid delusions. Katherine notes in her journals that when she first met Allen, he had regaled her with stories of meeting time travelers who assured him that he would help to make the Wayne family great. He also believed that Wayne Manor, this very house, had a mind of its own and that it built itself and grew without his input.”

Jason snorted. “Not an altogether unbelievable prospect, considering what we just saw,” he smirked.

Barbara ignored him. “He also believed in the family curse and engaged spiritualists of various calibers to lay protections around the Manor. He attested to seeing shadowed figures around him all the time, whispering, but never loudly enough that he could hear what they said. The stories really go on and on,” Barbara explained, frowning.

“But, he’s the guy we list as one of Gotham’s founding fathers,” Jason laughed, shrugging his shoulders.

“Not incorrectly,” Barbara countered. “Suffering from mental illness did not stop him from being a brilliant architect and from designing most of the business district of Gotham during the late 1800s.”

The smirk fell off of Jason’s face and sat looking bullish on his lounge. Steph tittered behind her hand and Tim gave Jason an unimpressed look.

“Poor Jason,” Selina purred, giving Jason a pitiable look that was ruined by the slight upward curve of her mouth at the corners. “Would you like some salve? I’m sure that burn stings.”

“Oh, my god. Shut up, everyone,” Jason said flatly.

Barbara hid a snort behind her hand. “Now now, children” she said, stifling a laugh. “Jason’s right to be surprised. Allen Wayne’s mental state was not the best and he quickly deteriorated after the death of his daughter.”

The room sobered quickly at the mention of the young Lucy Wayne’s mysterious death.

“How did they keep it under wraps?” Dick asked around a bite of sandwich. “Did they pay off the coroner or something?”

“No, actually, the authorities offered to change Allen’s cause of death as a favor to the Wayne family. You see, Allen’s father, Solomon, was a famous judge with a long career in Gotham. So, the Wayne family had friends in law enforcement. And, like I said, Allen Wayne was a respected figure in the growing city of Gotham. It didn’t do anybody any good to have his name besmirched.”

“That’s so sad,” Steph said, staring up at the ceiling, her chin resting on top of her hands. “Everyone was just looking out for themselves. The Wayne’s must have felt so alone,” she sighed. “Allen was alone in his head, their son was alone at school, and Katherine was alone in this big house. It really is tragic.”

Everyone was quiet for a long moment after that, a considering silence falling over all of them.

Barbara cleared her throat loudly to draw everyone’s attention back to her. “If you’re all done with your lunch for now, there is one more place that I’d like to point out to all of you.”

Around the room, the group of people mumbled their assent and slowly pushed their paper plates into a nearby trashcan. They followed Barbara as she lead the way out of the parlor and into a game room set further back into the house. The room was wide and the ceiling slightly lower than the rest of the house. There was another wide hearth set into the back wall of the room. The walls were paneled with a dark wood, the ceiling a similar color in a repeating square pattern. There was a thick dark red carpet on the floor covered in most places by intricately woven carpets. In the room were two heavy looking pool tables, a dart board set up on a nearby wall, and a number of comfortable looking leather couches and arm chairs pushed against the walls and gathered around the fireplace.

“Okay, pool,” Jason said, nodding. “I can get behind that.”

Barbara boosted herself up onto a nearby pool table and gracefully crossed one leg over the other. She smiled to see that Dick’s eyes carefully followed the movement.

“This is officially called the ‘Billiard’s Room’. When Katherine Wayne would host parties here, it was one of the most densely packed rooms in the Manor,” Babs explained.

“The parties that used to be thrown in this place were legendary,” Selina sighed, running appreciative fingertips over the deeply polished wooden edge of a nearby billiard’s table.

“After Katherine disappeared, the Manor remained uninhabited for some time,” Barbara continued, a little more soberly. “Kenneth Wayne, Katherine and Allen’s son, refused to live in the home his father had built. But, he allowed his wife, Laura, to use the Manor to host a variety of events. Laura Wayne was obsessed with the then burgeoning scene of Hollywood and would throw parties for all the up and coming stars and pay to ship them from out west to attend. She made her Wayne Manor parties the party to be at, at that time,” Barbara explained, smiling.

“I love all that stuff,” Selina sighed, fingering an ornate frame on the opposite wall. From within the frame, beautiful black and white faces smiled back at her. “Old Hollywood glamour! What I would do to be able to attend one of those parties!” Selina swooned, turning around to lean against the wall and smile dreamily at the others.

Barbara tittered a little behind her hand. “I’m glad to see someone’s excited. Then, you’ve heard of what happened to the actress, Olivia Havilland?”

The smile quickly dropped off of Selina’s face and she regarded Barbara with a keen eye.

“Yes, I have,” she replied. “Don’t tell me this is...” Selina trailed off as she looked around the room, a faint expression of sharp analytical interest overtaking her beautiful features.

"Olivia Havilland,” Barbara started, intending to explain for the rest of the guests who looked confused by their exchange, “was a famous up and coming actress in the 1930s. She was a favorite of Laura Wayne and a big hit at every party that Mrs. Wayne threw. In particular, Laura made it a point to have Olivia at her New Year’s Eve party that she threw in Wayne Manor every year.

“Olivia attended the New Year’s Eve party of 1939. She was a popular attendee, as she usually was. She was last seen in the billiard’s room, where we find ourselves now. She excused herself to use the restroom and was never seen again.”

There was a long pause, before Tim, whom Barbara could always count on to be the voice of reason in any room, spoke up.

“Wait, she disappeared from a house crowded with people?” he asked incredulously.

“Exactly.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” he replied flatly. “Someone must have seen entering the bathroom or leaving the building.”

“You’re exactly right, it doesn’t make any sense,” Barbara agreed easily. “But, that’s the truth. In the initial statements, everyone agreed that the billiard room was the last place she was seen. Afterward, as Olivia’s disappearance became more sensational, people came forward who claimed to see her leave the Manor in the arms of a mysterious gentleman. Some said they saw her stumble off alone. A variety of different reports started to crop up. But, I prefer to go by what everyone initially said the night after the party. Everything else was most likely just an attempt to get an interview and a picture in the paper.”

“So, that’s two ladies that have disappeared here, right?” Steph asked slowly.

Barbara smiled at her sympathetically. “An argument could definitely be made that Wayne Manor favors its women.”

“That is so creepy,” Steph muttered, frowning back at Barbara.

“Okay, so this is a house that eats women and kills everyone else?” Dick asked, laughing. Though his laugh had a hysterical edge to it.

“Pretty much,” Barbara replied with a shrug.

“I know you told us all this in the orientation, but ...” Dick trailed off.

“It’s a little more real once you’re here, huh?” she asked, hopping off the edge of the pool table.

“Yeah,” Dick replied sheepishly.

Barbara gave him a friendly smile and a warm pat on the shoulder. “No worries,” she assured him. “Like I said, the house has been inactive for years.”

“Tell that to the glowing disembodied apparition we saw upstairs,” Jason mumbled with a sour expression.

Barbara frowned slightly. “That was a little unexpected,” she allowed. “But, hopefully its just a sign that the house and its unseen occupants are reaching out to us. Which is, of course, exactly what we want,” Barbara smiled, pulling out her camcorder and pointing it at Jason with a wink.

Jason sneered and flipped her and her camera off.

“Well, that’s it for the tour!” Barbara said, snapping her camera shut and giving Jason a frosty smile. “How do you guys feel about pizza?”

* * *

Twenty minutes later, there was a large warm fire crackling in the fireplace and the radio was crooning soft melodies from the corner of the game room. Jason and Tim were camped out on a low well worn leather couch against the far wall, their heads tilted together as they discussed something seemingly intimate; serious expressions, despite small smiles flitting across their mouths from time to time. Selina was trying to teach an energetic Steph and a surly Damian how to play pool. Damian was excelling quickly, while Steph seemed to show no signs of improvement, except for managing not to scratch the table with her pool queue.

“Why the serious face?” Dick asked from behind her.

Barbara jumped slightly, crumpling the handful of readouts she held in her hand, before turning to smile nervously at the dark handsome psychic behind her.

“God, you scared me,” Barbara laughed, huffing out a breath and pressing a hand to her heart. She had been zoning out while going over the baseline data that her equipment had picked up while they were going about their business on the tour. So far it was confusing, to say the least.

"Sorry about that,” Dick replied, smiling apologetically. He held two dark glass bottles in his hand. “I found these in the kitchen. I don’t suppose Mr. Wayne would mind if we cracked a few bottles?” he asked hopefully.

Barbara took one of the bottles’ from Dick’s hand and brushed a thick film of dust off of the label with her fingertips. When she could finally make out the writing there, her eyebrows shot toward her hairline.

“Dick, these are really old!” she exclaimed. “Where did you find these?”

“In the wine cellar,” he replied simply.

“Wine cellar?” Barbara asked, confused. So far as she knew, Wayne Manor didn’t have a wine cellar.

“Yeah. There’s a door in the floor of the pantry that leads down to it. Mr. Wayne said we could help ourselves to any food in the kitchen, right? Does booze count as food?” Dick asked, a laugh skirting around the edges of his words.

“Booze totally counts as food,” Jason threw in, appearing, it seemed, from out of nowhere behind Dick. He plucked the remaining bottle out of Dick’s hand and whistled at the vintage. “The Wayne’s sure know how to roll, huh?” he asked, laughing.

Barbara sighed. She didn’t really want to be the bad guy and tell them to put it back, since she doubted that Bruce knew that he had a wine cellar filled with rare vintage wine in his abandoned family home. She already felt a little too much like a tour guide for rowdy elementary school children after spending much of the day touring the mansion.

"Well, okay,” Barbara replied reluctantly. “But, just these two bottles,” she added, taking the other bottle out of Jason’s hand and turning away from him and her research to take them back to the kitchen.

She heard Jason yell something to the effect of “Yay, booze!” to Tim who sounded like he snarked something back at him, but Barbara didn’t hear the rest of whatever they said. Dick followed her out into the hall and then into the kitchen. Barbara shuffled through kitchen drawers for something to open the bottles with while Dick boosted himself up onto a nearby counter.

“Sooo...” he started hesitantly. “This place is pretty far out, huh?” he continued awkwardly, smiling dopily in Barbara’s direction.

Babs snorted out a laugh. “Yes, this place is pretty ‘far out’,” Barbara agreed, adding air quotes for the full effect. “Probably a little more than I expected, actually,” she added ruefully.

Dick’s smile dimmed a little. “Hey, that’s good, right? I mean, if we come back from this investigation with big time evidence, it could make your career,” Dick said enthusiastically.

Barbara pulled a corkscrew from the back of the last drawer she checked. It was old, with a wide wooden handle atop a long sharply pointed spiral shaped metal dowel. She frowned down at it thoughtfully and wished she could find a more modern bottle opener. She had never used a plain corkscrew to open a wine bottle before.

“Furthering my career is great and all,” Barbara said down to the corkscrew she held in her hand. “But, I don’t want to do it at the expense of other people.”

She tossed the corkscrew toward Dick and he snatched it out of the air without taking his eyes off of her.

“I mean, this was all theoretical when I was planning it out. I knew the house reacted too and communicated best with psychics. I knew if I gathered a well rounded group of psychics to take with me on the investigation, my chances of an encounter would go way up.” Barbara crossed her arms over her chest and looked out a nearby window, a frown etched across her features. A nearby tree limb scratched against the glass. “We haven’t even begun trying to reach out to whatever is here and we already had an encounter. And, it wasn’t any of my experienced adult psychics who was targeted in that encounter, it was an eleven year old boy.”

Barbara sighed and ran a hand through her thick red hair. “I may not like Damian very much, but he is just a boy and he is my responsibility. I worry about continuing this investigation, if the spirits here are going to target him.”

Dick frowned at Barbara, his expression troubled. She immensely appreciated that he was taking her and her concerns seriously.

“Don’t worry, Babs,” he said, his voice pitched slightly lower than she was used to hearing from him. “I mean, we’re all here and we’ll all keep an eye on Damian. I’m sure no one here would want to see a kid, let alone anyone else, get hurt. We’ll watch out for each other. And, if it will make you feel better, I’ll keep an eye out especially for the kid,” Dick added with a lopsided smile.

Barbara found herself smiling back despite herself.

“Thanks,” she said softly. “I’d appreciate that.”

She cleared her throat. “Now, then. Are you going to open that or am I going to have to show off my muscles here?” she asked, pointing at the bottle of wine behind him.

Dick grinned more widely and picked put the bottle.

Before Dick could begin to pry the cork out of the dusty bottle, a loud banging reverberated through the house.

‘BANG BANG BANG!’

A silence followed until it was broken by the sound of Jason’s voice yelling out “I’ll get it!”

Jason strode down the large open hallway, his boots clicking faintly on the dusty marble floor. He pulled open the front door, counterweights in the wall banging slightly as they worked to help him pull it open.

Illuminated by the porchlight directly above the door stood a tall emaciated figure, his skin almost white in the pale artificial light overhead, his hair a bright bottled green. The man was wearing a red cap and a red and white polo shirt with the words ‘Marco’s Pizza’ patched in red on the top right breast. The cap threw a deep black shadow over his eyes.

He smiled widely at Jason, his lips bright red and chapped and his teeth yellowed and crooked. He balanced a red box shaped bag in one hand and a slip of paper in the other. He offered Jason the piece of paper and Jason took it, checking the bottom of the receipt for the total.

“Hey, nice digs,” the pizza boy laughed, his voice high and raspy.

Jason pulled out his wallet and handed over a few bills.

“Keep the change, bud,” Jason said, taking the stack of pizza boxes as the guy pulled them out of the warmer bag and handed them over to him.

“Thanks, pal!” the pizza guy replied laughing, his voice cracking high and a little frantic at the end.

Jason closed the door with a loud ‘Thud!’ and turned around with the hot pizza boxes balanced on top of his right hand. He pulled a face and raised an eyebrow at the now closed door. He watched the headlights of the pizza guy’s car as he pulled out of the circle driveway.

“That wasn’t weird,” he muttered to himself as he carried the boxes back to the billiard room.

“Pizza’s here?” Barbara asked as she carried the two open bottles back into the room.

“Yep,” Jason replied, putting the boxes down on an empty coffee table and starting to pop them open.

“Perfect! So is the wine,” Barbara smiled, sitting the bottles down on a nearby table as Dick came in behind her to set out a stack of paper cups.

"Oh, we are going to be classy tonight, my friends,” Selina crowed as she danced enthusiastically toward the open wine.

“I’m not opening any more bottles, so try and make these two last,” Barbara warned, as she stood sentry over the liquor.

Selina poured a small measure into a cup and took a dainty sip. “Phew!” she called, blowing out a long breath through red painted lips. “Won’t need much of this anyway! Strong stuff,” she commented.

“Maybe I’ll skip the wine, then,” Steph commented, frowning at the two dusty bottles on the table.

Jason was piling his paper plate high with cheesy steaming pizza, fully ignoring the small group gathered around the wine bottles. Tim had already snagged a slice of vegan white pizza for himself and was half done with it, a rapturous expression on his face.

It didn’t take long for the wine and pizza to dissipate into the variety of mouths ranged around them. Tim lectured Jason over how much pepperoni pizza he was eating, Damian and Selina traded compliments on the vegan pizza, and Barbara and Dick ended up putting away much of the wine by themselves, cozied up close together near the roaring fireplace.

Someone turned up the radio, though Barbara couldn’t remember who. It was an oldies station, beautiful and boisterous big band music filling the warm cozy room. Her head felt warm and bubbly, the wine seemingly lifting the emotional weight away from her to leave her feeling as if she could traipse around the room on tiptoe and not break a sweat. Which, she supposed, she could. She did practice ballet and wasn’t that rusty quite yet.

"May I have this dance?” a gallant voice asked. When Barbara looked up, she was glad to see Dick’s smiling face looking down at her. Though, she couldn’t imagine who else she was expecting.

“If you insist,” Barbara replied, taking the hand he proffered and allowing him to haul her to her feet. She stumbled slightly, the room spinning a little around her and landed against his chest with a small laugh.

“Methinks the lady is a bit unsteady on her feet,” Dick laughed, locking his hands in the small of her back.

Barbara smirked up at him. “No, I think you’re mistaking my lightness for unsteadiness,” she replied, physically removing his hands from the small of her back so that she could clasp them in her own and lead him away from the little group of couches and chairs and into the big open marble floored hallway. “I’m very light on my feet!” she declared loudly, holding Dick’s hand above her head so that she could spin quickly and enjoy the stability that his hand afforded her.

When her spinning left her off balance and staggering, Dicks helped to steady her with his strong hands on her hips. “Whoah, whoah, whoah,” he laughed, as he helped her regain her balance. “I see I was completely mistaken,” he continued to laugh as she leaned against him.

“Completely,” she agreed.

“Can we break in on this dance?” a feminine voice called from the game room.

Barbara looked up to see Selina swaying into the hall with a sour looking Damian on her arm, his back ramrod straight. He looked nervous, but determined.

“The more the merrier,” Dick replied for her. Barbara was glad he had answered. She wasn’t sure she would have been able to stop herself from commenting on Damian’s expression. She didn’t think she’d ever seen someone look like they wanted to dance any less than he did. But, at the same time he looked stubbornly determined to do just that.

“Wonderful!” Barbara heard Selina sing, before Dick had her swinging around in circles, the room turning into smudges of brown and white and red behind his face as they turned round and round.

“You’re a wonderful dancer,” Barbara heard Selina say from somewhere to her left.

“Of course,” Damian replied, his voice stiff but slightly pleased. “I have perfect timing and hand eye coordination. Mother never would have allowed me into good company without me knowing how to waltz, at the least.”

Selina laughed, her voice bright and tinkling, mixing perfectly with the wailing of trumpets and sax. Barbara buried a laugh in Dick’s chest, titillated to hear Selina working her natural womanly wiles on an eleven year old boy. She was sure it would only help to swell Damian’s amazing ego, either way.

Barbara looked up over Dick’s shoulder and noticed a pair of dark heads swirl past her. She pulled away from Dick slightly to blink over at the sight of Tim and Jason dancing closely together. They were both smiling, Jason taking Tim’s hand so that he could give him a quick spin, surprising a burst of laughter from the younger man.

“They’re cute, huh?” Dick said, following Barbara’s eyes.

Babs looked up at Dick, surprised.

“Maybe if this whole professorship thing doesn’t work out, you have a career waiting for you as a psychic matchmaker?” Dick suggested with a waggle of his eyebrows.

“Haha, you’re so funny,” Barbara replied dryly, though she knew a smile was stretching wide across her face.

“Okay, seriously. Someone better offer to dance with me right now, or I’m going to flip my shit,” Steph said loudly from the side lines to a loud burst of laughter in reply from the different couples dancing to the sound of the loudly crooning radio.

“Oh, darling,” Selina cried. “Come to me!”

Barbara laid her head against Dick’s strong chest and watched the bouncy blond run over to Selina and her small dance partner. She closed her eyes and for a moment allowed herself to believe that maybe everything would work out okay.


	8. That Night

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> New tags -> Explicit language. This probably should have been added a while ago. Specifically in this chapter for Jason's dirty mouth!
> 
> Also! Please take note that I made some small revisions to the previous chapter. A very nice and observant commenter pointed out to me that Damian is vegetarian in the comic books, not Tim! So, I went back and changed a few scenes to reflect that. Nothing major.

It didn’t take long before everyone was tired and sprawled out on various surfaces yawning and blinking heavily. Shortly after roping everyone into helping to clean up the small graveyard of paper plates, cups and pizza boxes, Barbara was herding her group of investigators up the stairs and into their separate rooms.

They had all selected rooms on the second floor shortly after arriving. For convenience’s sake, Barbara had asked that they all select rooms close to one another and they had mostly complied.

Damian had chosen the first bedroom at the top of the stairs. He didn’t really care what the bedroom looked like or where it was located. Since he was the first person (besides Barbara) to arrive, he had run up the stairs and threw his bag into the first room he saw without really looking at it. He didn’t get a chance to take another look at his room until he was getting ready for bed that night.

It was a plain room, as plain as any of the bedrooms in Wayne Manor got anyway. The walls were wallpapered with a pale gray print with ivory colored vines crawling vertically up and down the walls. There were two windows in the wall directly across from the door, hung with long off white lace curtains that hung down and pooled on the floor. The floor was wood, thin old wood slats that were polished and waxed by years of tread and ran horizontally across the floor to end at a plain footboard. The furniture was plain too, a basic medium brown wood garnished with gold colored paint along the edges. The bed was a sleigh bed, the head and footboard elegantly curved. There was a dresser and a vanity pushed against another wall. An old chifferobe was pushed against the wall closest to the door. Damian had stashed his bookbag and dufflebag there without bothering to unpack them.

Damian rushed to jump into the bed, his feet cold despite the rug laid between his feet and the bare floorboards. He pulled the heavy sheet and comforter up over him and laid staring at the ceiling. It was plaster, with some small hairline cracks stretching out from the corners. He still felt a little energetic, but he could also feel sleep dragging at him, making his limbs heavy and his mind lethargic.

Rolling over, Damian pulled on the short chain hanging from the lamp beside his bed. With a click, the room was thrown into darkness.

Snuggling down into the bedding, Damian pulled the blankets up to his ear and rolled onto his side, pulling his knees up toward his chest. Around him, the sound of the house shifting and moaning kept him awake. He wasn’t used to the sounds the Manor made, so very much unlike the quiet hum of heating and cooling and elevators that the penthouse made at night.

Damian shifted in his bed, worried that he wouldn’t be able to fall asleep. He started counting backwards in arabic in an attempt to settle his mind. He only got to five before he drifted off and fell asleep.

Until a softly spoken sound drew him out of it.

Grumbling, Damian rolled back to his other side, toward the sound. He kept his eyes closed and tried to fall back to sleep, sure the sound had just been a product of his dreaming.

But, he heard it again, the sound of his name whispered in a high voice against a backdrop of soft tapping.

Frowning, Damian sat up and blinked blearily at the slowly materializing image of the room around him. The moon was streaking pale light through the lacy curtains, faintly illuminating the vague outlines of the furniture pressed up against the wall.

Looking to his left, Damian noticed that the door to the chifferobe was open, the mirror attached to the interior of the door shining back at him. Standing just inside the open door was Lucy Wayne.

She was dressed in a black and white sailor outfit, a red neckerchief tied under her collar. She was also completely soaked, her black hair stuck to her face, her pigtails hanging heavy and sopping over her shoulders. A small puddle was developing around her feet, where her heavy pleated skirt dripped steadily onto the floorboards. But, other than how wet she was, she looked normal and alive.

She regarded Damian with large sad blue eyes and held out a small chubby hand to him.

“Damian,” she called, a small whine edging her voice.

Damian felt a fog begin to come over his senses, his feeling of reticence and caution slowly fading from his mind. He shook his head hard and blinked heavily, trying to shake the fog from his head.

He pressed a hand pressed to his forehead at the point where a sharp pain was beginning to develop. Damian slowly climbed out of his bed, staggering and fighting himself the whole way. His toes touched the threadbare carpet on the floor, coldness seeping up into his feet as the warmth of sleep was slowly sapped away from him.

“Damian,” Lucy said again, her voice confident now.

Damian took one step toward her. Then, another. He pressed both hands to his face and tried to remember when he got out of bed.

He took another step.

And a sharp rap sounded at the door behind him.

Damian jumped, gasping slightly. He pulled his hands away from his face and stared at the place where Lucy had been standing. The door of the chifferobe was still open, but there was no more Lucy. There was still water left behind. It stood out against the dry floorboards, the color dingy and dirty in the pale moonlight.

Damian stared at the water on the floor for a few seconds, trying desperately to reason away why it was there. There was another loud rap at the door.

Growling in frustration, Damian turned on his heel, marched toward the door and pulled it open before the person on the other side could knock again.

Dick stood out in the hall with his hand poised to knock on Damian’s door again. He blinked down in surprise at Damian and the murderous expression painted across his face.

“What do you want, Grayson?” Damian bit out, glaring up at the man in front of him.

Dick took a visible step back. He opened his mouth, eyebrows drawing down in self-defense, until he seemed to reign himself in and think better of whatever he was going to say. Taking a deep breath, Dick started over.

“I’m, uh, having a little trouble sleeping,” Dick said haltingly.

Damian’s only response was to raise an eyebrow. Despite the lack of response, the implied ‘What do you want me to do about it?’ was very clear from Damian’s expression and body language.

Dick coughed awkwardly, before continuing, “I was hoping we could share a bed? I’m too embarrassed to ask anyone else,” Dick whispered at the end, blushing self consciously despite himself. His attempt at subterfuge was painfully obvious to the young boy in front of him as well as to himself.

The young Wayne heir was about to turn Dick away, when he was struck by a thought. Nervously, Damian checked over his shoulder. The chifferobe door was still open and the floor in front of it still shone in the moonlight, moisture gathered in drops on the floorboards.

Sighing, Damian looked back at Dick, who seemed to be preparing himself for rejection. “Fine,” Damian snapped, immediately turning away from the door and climbing back into bed. He left the door open behind him, a silent invitation.

“R-really?” Dick stuttered from the hall before stepping into the room.

Damian was grateful that he didn’t say anything else. The boy heard Dick close the door behind him with a soft click and then he felt a weight cause the bed to dip behind him. The warmth of another body settled against Damian’s back. Damian shifted slightly, the feeling of sharing a bed alien to him, something he had never experienced before.

But, he was already tired and the warmth of Dick’s body quickly soaked through his body. Sleep weighed him down and quickly pulled him deep into its tepid waters.

* * *

Meanwhile, down the hall, Selina Kyle was sleeping restlessly.

She had chosen for herself a slightly more lavish room. It was furnished in dark woods and deep reds and shining gold. The walls were paneled on the bottom half, the top a red and gold filigree wall paper. The floor was covered with a thick deep red carpet. The furniture was large, heavy and regal, the wood worked and carved into beautiful abstractions. She was sleeping in a large four poster bed, a heavy red curtain hung above the bed with dark red tassels hanging from the edges.

Despite the lavish accommodations, Selina tossed and turned, her sleep haunted by terrible dreams of death and despair. Images of a woman hanging from a rope by her throat danced between images of huge horrid beasts rising from the surf of a tumultuous ocean. Running through all these churning confusing images was a steady beat, ‘thump, thump, thump, thump,’ like a war drum or a panicked heartbeat.

In one particularly savage thrash, Selina threw her arm out and slapped her hand against the nearby bedside table, startling herself awake.

Hissing in pain, Selina cradled her hand against her chest and tried to clear the cobwebs from her head. She could remember flashes from whatever dream she had been having, but nothing was coming through clearly. Which was unusual for her, normally her dreams were vividly clear and often prophetic. Whatever she was dreaming most recently was obfuscated and confusing.

Sighing, Selina buried her face in her pillow and decided to try and forget about it.

Which was when she heard it.

Despite being awake, the endless tattoo of thumping continued through her consciousness. Except, it sounded much closer and much more real now.

Her hands trembling slightly, Selina pushed herself up onto her elbows and looked to her right, where the sound was emanating. In the dim slash of moonlight coming through a nearby window, Selina could make out a pair of feet. They were dressed in shining dress shoes and long tailored trousers. They were men’s feet, hanging in the air and swinging loosely back and forth. Every time they swung to the left, they hit the wall and created the distinctive ‘thump’ that Selina had been hearing in staccato across her dreamscape.

Gasping, Selina tore her eyes away from the haunting sight and lunged at her bedside table. She slapped at the lamp sitting there until it finally came on. She the shuffled toward the side of the bed, knees and hands shaking as the struggled to untangle herself from the bedding wrapped around her.

By the time she freed herself and looked back across the bed toward where she had seen the legs, they were gone. Banished by the light or, possibly, just by her acknowledgement of them.

Rattled, Selina took a heavy seat on the edge of her bed and pressed her hand between her breasts to feel the frantic beat of her heart against her ribs. She had seen many visions in her time, but never anything like that.

* * *

Jason was sleeping better than Selina, at the least. He had eaten his weight in pizza and had put away a good amount of the wine. The combination of the greasy food and vintage wine helped to put him to sleep as soon as his head hit the pillow.

He was in a deep sleep when he felt someone else crawl into the bed with him. He smiled to himself in his sleep as he felt the mattress dip from the weight of another person.

Jason had invited Tim into his bed before they had all retired to the second floor. He was disappointed to receive a lukewarm reception from the younger man when he invited him to his bedroom. He had been able to cozy up to Tim during the evening in the billiards room. They had talked extensively about Tim, about his classes, his friends and his professors. Jason had steered the conversation away from himself as much as possible. Tim had countered by refusing to talk about his family or his relationship with them very bluntly.

But, Jason had considered the night a success over all. At the end, Tim had seemed more comfortable with him by the end of it. Jason had been hoping to seal the deal with a second roll in the sheets. He had only been a little crushed when Tim refused.

The weight on the other side of the bed shifted and Jason felt a cold hand rub sensually down his spine. Jason shivered slightly. The hand was cold and a little damp.

“D’you just get out of the shower?” Jason mumbled, rolling over to put his nose in a mop of dark wet hair. He laid his hand on the other’s shoulder, feeling wetness on the skin there. The smell was not shampoo fresh, either. It smelled more like stagnant pond water. The hair he had pressed his face in was sopping wet, too. 

“Jeez, did you towel off at all?” Jason asked, pulling away and waking up a little more.

“Jason,” the other person in the bed sighed. And, it wasn’t Tim. That wasn’t Tim’s voice breathing out against Jason’s breast bone. The voice was distinctly feminine, breathy and sensual.

Jerking back, Jason looked down at the figure in his bed. He blinked his eyes, trying to will them to focus in the dim light filtering in from outside his window. The figure lying in his bed was, indeed, a woman. One he had seen before.

Olivia Havilland lay in his bed, dripping dirty water onto his bed sheets, her body completely nude and shining in the half light from the window. She looked back at Jason with sly dark eyes, her lips full and pouting as she called his name again.

“Jason,” she crooned, as Jason cussed and struggled with the sheets as he tried and failed to jump out of the bed and away from her. “Where are you going? Don’t you want to be with me?” she asked, pouting at Jason with a begging expression.

“Fuck you, bitch,” Jason spat, finally freeing himself from the bed and falling to the floor on unsteady feet. Jason turned for the door, meaning to make a quick exit, but was stopped by a cry from the dead woman still in his bed.

“I know what you think!” Olivia exclaimed, sitting up in bed, the sheets pooling around her luxuriously wide hips, her full breasts still bare. Jason growled at himself and forced his eyes away from her. “You think that I want you dead. But, nothing could be further from the truth,” she purred, leaning forward.

Jason scoffed, crossing his arms and looking up at the ceiling, refusing to make eye contact with the terrifyingly real looking apparition in his bed. “Sure,” he replied. “You just want to ride my dick and walk off into the sunset together,” he snarked.

“Tch,” Olivia clicked her tongue, her face falling into an ugly scowl for a small moment, before she regained her composure and pulled her face back into an offended pout. “We both know that you truly understand what it means to die,” she whispered. Her full lips quirked into a small smile to see Jason’s posture freeze at her words. “What if I could tell you that you never have too? What if I told you that you could live forever?” she whispered urgently.

It was Jason’s turn to click his tongue. “Then, I would tell you that you’re a crazy broad. But, I’m guessing you already knew that.”

Jason turned his eyes back to Olivia to see her reaction. She regarded him coldly, nothing flirtatious or inviting left in her expression.

“I am not crazy,” she hissed. “The Manor can offer you real immortality, if you are only intelligent enough to take it!” she spat, her nose wrinkling and her lip curling at Jason in disgust. “I thought you, of all the foolish people here, might understand what I was offering. I see now I was wrong.”

Olivia turned her face away and her smile turned gruesome, a cruel turn of her lip, her eyes dark and glittering black under thick black eyelashes. Slowly, she turned her smile on Jason, the whites of her eyes disappearing behind a dilating set of black iris’, her mouth only twisting wider, her teeth growing longer, sharper and dirtier the longer he looked.

Within the space of a breath, Jason turned on his heel and ran out of the room. He slammed his door behind him and heard a heavy weight fall against it with an inhuman roar.

Heart beating frantically and his breaths coming in gasps, Jason ran full tilt down the hall until he reached a door that was slightly ajar. He pushed it open and moved toward the bed by the door.

“Tim!” he called. “Tim, get up,” Jason snapped, fumbling at the bedside table until he could turn the light on. Eventually, he was able to get the small lamp to turn on, illuminating the room with a soft golden light.

But, the only thing that Jason saw in that light was a mussed and empty bed. Tim was nowhere to be found.

* * *

Tim slept fitfully after everyone else had gone to bed. He wasn’t sure if it was the heavy food he had eaten so late in the evening or the hurt look on Jason’s face after he had turned him down. Either way, Tim was regretting not accepting a sleeping pill from Steph before he retired for the night.

Tim was only sleeping by halves when he heard an excited knock at the door.

Blinking sleep out of his eyes, Tim pushed himself out of his bed and to his door. He was surprised to see Jason standing there in a pair of pajama pants and a t-shirt, looking excited.

“Jason?” Tim asked, confused and a little apprehensive. He was worried that Jason was going to try and press him further to come to his room.

“Tim, you have to come see this,” Jason enthused. He sounded breathless and Tim took notice that there was color high in his cheeks.

Jason reached out and grasped Tim’s wrist in his hand and tugged him lightly forward, but Tim held onto the door and didn’t budge.

“See what?” Tim asked, still confused and maybe a little sleepy.

“You have to see it to understand it,” Jason said hurriedly, tugging a little more urgently. “It explains so much about what’s happened here!”

Tim frowned back at Jason. “Shouldn’t we wake up Barbara and show her?” he asked.

Jason quickly shook his head, immediately dismissing that idea. “She won’t get it,” he said dismissively. “Not like you and I do. I know you’ll understand it as soon as you see it. You and I think alike,” Jason said, flashing Tim a warm and secretive smile.

Tim flushed slightly, his ego swelling despite himself.

“Okay...” Tim said hesitantly.

He let go of his grip on the bedroom door and Jason needed no further encouragement to tug the smaller man behind him down the hall.

Jason led Tim down the carpeted corridor and down the curved open staircase into the cavernous main hall. Once there they then made a sharp u-turn and began walking toward the back of the house and the patio doors that let out into the backyard.

“Can you at least tell me where we’re going?” Tim asked, frowning as he noticed that Jason was making a beeline toward the backyard.

Jason smiled over his shoulder at Tim. “Don’t you like surprises?” he asked, a slight laugh in his voice.

Tim frowned back at Jason. Jason’s mood was starting to seem odd to him. He could understand Jason being excited about finding out some kind of enlightening information about the manor, but his upbeat attitude seemed ill fitting to anything that could explain such a tragic past.

“I guess?” Tim answered hesitantly, his mouth pulling down in a frown at the corners as he stared at the side of Jason’s head in consternation.

Jason just laughed in reply, the sound oddly hollow in the cavernous hall, before leading Tim through a patio door that had already been left ajar. Jason lead Tim quickly across the cracked surface of the patio and directly toward the still pond in the middle of the yard. The water in the now still fountain was mostly concealed under a blanket of plants and algae. The still statue of the woman covering her face stood sentry at the far end of the stone pond. He stopped squarely in front of it, the smile wiped completely from his face. Tim stumbled to a stop beside Jason, looking worried back and forth between Jason and the pond.

“Now what?” Tim asked once the silence had drug on too long.

Jason turned to Tim, his face still oddly blank of emotion.

“You have to get in. Look down, straight down, and you’ll see it,” Jason replied, his voice deep, rumbling out from somewhere deep in his diaphragm.

Tim flushed and hesitated. The thought of climbing into a cold pond in the middle of the night with only a guy he met and slept with yesterday for company didn’t exactly put him at ease. But, he couldn’t think of any particular reason not to do it (other than that he just plain didn’t want too). So, Tim leaned forward and rolled up the bottoms of his pajama pants and slowly stepped into the pond.

The water was freezing cold and Tim hissed a breath through his teeth at the sensation. The bottom of the pond was obviously stone, but slick with algae or some kind of plant growth that squished between his toes. Greenery, lilies and various types of plants bobbed against his shins.

Questioningly, Tim looked back at Jason who continued to regard him blankly. Jason made an impatient gesture with his hand, urging Tim to walk forward.

Sighing, Tim took a cautious step forward and then another, careful to maintain his balance on the slick surface of the stone bottom of the pond. The water around him moved and flexed at his disruption. Tim continued to trudge forward until he was standing roughly in the middle of the pond. He turned to look back at Jason again.

The other man stared at him for a moment before solemnly pointing down at the spot in front of his feet.

Tim frowned, but obediently turned around and looked down in front of him. He didn’t see anything, but it was hard to tell if there might be something at the bottom of the pond through all the plants growing on the surface. Tim bent forward at his waist and used his fingertips to try and herd the plants out of the way so that he could look closer at the water in front of him. He even used his foot to brush away the algae growing on the stone bottom of the pond. Still, he couldn’t make anything out of the ordinary. Only the plain stone bottom of the pond and reflections of moonlight on the surface of the water.

Frustrated, Tim straightened and looked back over his shoulder for Jason in order to ask him exactly what he was looking for. But, Jason was no longer standing at the edge of the pond. Standing where Jason had been was a woman.

She looked unreal. Her skin was an unnatural white, ghostly and giving off a supernatural light in the dim night. Her hair was long, wavy, black and dripping wet. It hung limply over her face, concealing most of her features. She was dressed in a heavy black dress, an old style of dress with a full skirt and a tightly laced up bodice. Hanging from her neck was a rope fashioned into a huge heavy noose.

Tim stared, transfixed, at the woman for an amount of time until he heard the sound of cracking loudly from behind him.

Feeling panic begin to grow in his chest, Tim turned around to look back in front of him.

Standing directly in front of him was the statue he had seen earlier that day, of the woman shielding her face. The statue looked much the same as it had in the daylight. But, as Tim watched, the arm seemed to move and strain where it clutched at its own face. There was another loud sound and Tim was able to see a crack begin to run down the side of the statue’s cheek as its face began to separate from the rest of it.

Tim was pulling in breaths in frantic gasps now, his breathing labored, his head spinning. He spun around again, to check the location of the woman, but she was gone. There was nothing in the tall grass to indicate she or Jason had ever been there.

But, that also meant that Tim’s path of escape was now open.

Tim tried to dash forward, back toward the Manor and the relative comfort it may afford him. His footing slipped on the slick bottom of the pond and he fell forward, the cold dark water sloshing over him. Behind him, he could hear more loud cracking sounds, presumably as the statue continued to rend its own face away from itself.

Tim struggled to his feet and was able to push himself over the edge of the fountain and into the tall grass where he could get better traction. He ran forward, his pace frantic, his heart pounding with adrenaline. He ran quickly for the open patio door he and the strange Jason from before had just exited.

He was so blinded by fear that he didn’t even see the person standing in the doorway until he was barreling at full force right into that person, bowling them over into the hallway.

Strong arms wrapped around Tim’s back and clutched him to a wide muscled chest, even as he struggled to free himself and keep running.

“Tim, Tim!” Jason yelled as he tried to clutch the smaller struggling man to him. “Calm down! Tim, I’ve got you! You’re -”

Jason stopped as something gray went streaking through the air above him and Tim and came clattering to the marble floor. It landed roughly five feet away from them, a face with unseeing eyes staring straight up where it landed.

Jason and Tim both stared at it, one confused the other thrumming with pure terror.

With a small sound, Tim collapsed against Jason, all the fight and energy draining out of him.

Jason clutched Tim closer as he sat up and looked out at the fountain.

“What the hell?” he whispered, mostly to himself.

The status was different, now. It had its arm stretched forward, straight at the patio, and its face was gone. As if it had just thrown it at Tim’s retreating back.

“The fuck is wrong with this place?” Jason rasped.

He wouldn’t find his answer that night.


	9. The Morning After

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, things got a little hectic and I didn't get my word count before the end of November. *sad violins*  
> But, it's okay! I'm going to keep pushing to try and get this story done in a timely manner. There might be a small break after this chapter as I work to get a few stories done for a Christmas exchange, but after that expect chapters to continue going up.

Barbara came downstairs the next morning feeling groggy. She hadn’t slept well, her normally restful sleep plagued by strange dreams that she couldn’t remember upon waking up.

She had showered and tucked herself into some khaki pants and a sweater, tying her hair back into a messy bun, before heading downstairs to see if she could rustle up some coffee. She stopped at the foot of the stairs and stared at the view she had of the billiard’s room.

In a nearby loveseat, Jason and Tim were tangled together under a heap of blankets. There was wrinkled clothes discarded on the floor and Barbara’s eyebrows crawled up her forehead as she realized that they were Tim’s. The two men were fast asleep. Jason was sprawled inelegantly over the loveseat, his legs and arms hanging limply off the various edges. Tim was curled up on Jason’s chest like an overgrown cat, his arms and legs tucked in close to his chest and his cheek resting on Jason’s breastbone. Barbara could see his head, a bare shoulder and a naked leg sticking out from under the nest of blankets, but otherwise he was obscured from view.

Barbara rubbed at her eyes wearily. Maybe it wasn’t her place to tell them off? No, it was definitely her place to tell them off. She was all for free love and all, but this wasn’t her or their house. It was Mr. Wayne’s and as the leader of the investigation she had to stick up for his interests in his absence.

Trying to wipe the tired look off of her face and failing, Barbara walked over to the two and gently touched Tim on the shoulder. She had barely brushed the pads of her fingers against his skin before he was sitting bolt upright, staring at her with large frightened eyes.

Barbara quickly swallowed the words she had meant to say and changed direction.

“Tim,” she said softly, her hand hovering over his shoulder, not sure if he would welcome her touch. “Are you okay? Why are you two sleeping down here?”

Tim stared blankly at Barbara, his expression haunted and torn. Luckily for him, he wasn’t forced to answer her.

“He got attacked by your fucking manor,” Jason groused from under Tim.

Jason was slowly blinking his eyes open and cautiously pushing himself into a sitting position. From all the winces and scowls he made as he moved, Barbara imagined that the couch did not treat him well last night. Jason’s hair was a mess, stuck to his skull in some places and sticking straight up in others. He was still dressed in his sleep clothes, a loose well worn t-shirt and a pair of sleep pants. They were rumpled, wrinkled and stuck to his chest.

“What do you mean, he got attacked?” Barbara asked, frowning down at Jason. This time, she did press a hand to Tim’s head, running her fingers through his hair. It was tangled and felt dirty against her hand, something she wouldn’t have expected from Tim.

“Exactly what I said,” Jason snapped back at her. “Something pretending to be me lead him out of his room and down to the pond where it attacked him!” Jason shouted, his voice rising with every word.

Tim’s shoulders folded in and he gathered the blankets closer against himself. “I’m fine,” he said quietly, more for the benefit of himself than anything, Barbara thought.

“Lower your voice!” Barbara demanded, her eyes sharp on Jason. He closed his mouth with an audible click. “Jason, are you sure? Because, if you are, I hope you understand what a big claim that is,” Barbara said.

The muscles in Jason’s jaw jumped as he fought his own impulse to yell.

“I am absolutely sure,” Jason gritted out. “Not only do I absolutely believe Tim, but I absolutely believe my own eyes. I saw that thing attack him myself!” Jason argued.

Barbara closed her eyes for a moment and took a deep breath. This was big news. It was tragic that none of this was caught on tape in anyway. But, the fact that two independent investigators had experienced it was really something. Barbara didn’t know whether she should be worried or excited.

Before she could ask for any further details, she heard two pairs of footsteps come down the stairs. Turning around, Babs saw Dick and Damian coming down the stairs together, Dick’s head turned curiously in her direction.

“Something up?” he asked, giving Tim and Jay a probing look.

“Tim was attacked by a ghost last night,” Barbara said, aware that her voice sounded slightly faint.

“What?” Dick exclaimed. He hurried down the stairs and then over to Tim. Tim huddled deeper into his blanket nest. “Timmy, are you okay?” Dick asked, his hands hovering over Tim’s head and shoulders in a more absurd version of what Barbara had just done, wanting to touch and comfort but unsure if it would be allowed.

“I’m fine,” Tim repeated petulantly, leaning away from Dick’s hands.

“I saw one too,” a small voice piped up from near the hall.

All four heads popped up and turned around to look at Damian.

“You saw what?” Barbara asked sharply, frowning at the young Wayne heir.

“I saw a ghost last night. Lucy Wayne,” Damian clarified, giving Barbara a look to clearly indicate that he thought she was thick.

“Aw, you too, little Wayne?” a voice called from the top of the stairs. Selina followed her voice down into the hall wearing a long dressing robe, tousled hair and a troubled frown.

“Wait, you saw something too?” Barbara asked, shaking her head in disbelief.

“I think so,” Selina sighed, coming to stand behind Damian. “Not Lucy Wayne, though. I believe I encountered her father.”

Barbara closed her eyes for another long moment and held her hand up in front of her signaling everyone to just stop. She then took a deep breath, filling her lungs up to their very tip top before letting it all come out through her nose. Afterward, she felt a little bit better. But, only a little bit.

“Okay, I think we should sit down and talk out exactly what happened last night. Why don’t you all get changed and get some breakfast,” Barbara suggested. “I’ll go grab Steph and then we can sort all of this out.”

* * *

More than an hour later, the entire contingent were still sitting around the kitchen table frowning down at soggy bowls of cereal and forgotten mugs of lukewarm coffee.

Barbara was slowly working her index and ring fingers into her temples, moving them in slow soothing circles to try and urge a mounting headache away. Dick was giving her a sympathetic look.

“Just to be clear; everyone, with the exception of myself, Dick and Steph, had a supernatural encounter last night?” she asked slowly, enunciating her words carefully.

Dick nodded hesitantly, Selina tipped her head forward with a serious expression, Jason glared somewhere into the middle distance and grunted his affirmative, while Tim nodded glumly, Steph stuttered out shaken ‘yes’, and Damian silently chomped away at his soggy cornflakes, his silence acting as his acquiescence.

“How do we feel about that?” Dick asked Barbara hesitantly.

Barbara took another deep breath and considered her words carefully before responding. “Normally, I would be ecstatic to have so much activity,” she said slowly. Jason made an angry noise which was quickly cut off by a quick chiding sound from Selina. “But,” Barbara continued sharply, “what happened with Tim shows that the spirits here are more than capable of doing harm to us. Which drastically changes what needs to happen here.”

“Which brings us the biggest question of all,” Jason quickly followed. “What do we do now?”

Barbara continued to massage her temples and stare morosely down at the table. “I’m going to call Mr. Wayne, first of all. This happened on his property, after all. If he says to shut down the investigation, then I will,” Barbara decided.

“And, what if he doesn’t?” Jason shot back.

“Then, we’ll discuss it together,” Barbara spit back.

Jason opened his mouth to reply, but Dick cut him off. “We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it!” he said loudly. “Right?” he added, pointing a sharp look toward Jason.

The other psychic settled back in his chair, a surly expression settled on his face.

Hesitantly, Barbara picked up her phone, which had been sitting face down on the table in front of her. She unlocked it, pulled up her contacts and began to scroll through the list of names. She scrolled down until she found Bruce Wayne’s name listed among others. She opened his contact and stared at it for a moment, mustering her courage before hitting the call button.

She only had his corporate number and it was early, but she hoped that he might have it set up to forward to another number and that he might still answer. The phone rang and rang and, eventually, his voice mail answered. Barbara closed her eyes in defeat as Bruce’s deep rumbling voice greeted her and asked her to leave a message.

At the beat, Barbara spoke into her phone, “Mr. Wayne, it’s Barbara. There’s been some unusual happenings at Wayne Manor that I’d like to talk to you about. Please return this phone call at your earliest convenience.”

“Seriously? Voice mail?” Jason snapped.

Barbara gave him a tired look.

“Okay, boss,” Jason continued. “What are we going to do now?”

“We wait for Mr. Wayne to call me back,” Barbara responded as evenly and as rationally as she could.

“Oh, sure! Just sit around and wait in the killer house. We can twiddle our thumbs or play patty cake while it thinks up new ways to off us,” Jason shot back, his voice thick with sarcasm.

“That’s enough!” Dick yelled at Jason.

“No, it’s not!” Jason yelled back. “We should get the hell out of here while we still can! This place is dangerous. This isn’t normal haunted house bullshit, there is some real freaky shit going on in here. And I, for one, am not going to stick around to see what it does next.”

Jason stood, his height making it seem like he was lording himself over the rest of them still seated around the kitchen table.

“Tim?” Jason asked, a thread of vulnerability running through his voice.

Tim had his head down, his elbows braced on the table and his forehead cradled in his hands. “Jason, just -” Tim didn’t finish, just sighed and sank further toward the table.

Jason’s face contorted in anger and hurt for a single moment, before he turned on his heel and stomped out of the room.

Dick let out an exasperated noise and looked around the table at the others. Everyone avoided his eyes, except for Steph.

“I’ll go after him,” Steph said quietly. She gave Tim’s shoulder a squeeze as she stood up and hurried to follow Jason into the hall.

Dick shifted nervously in his chair and shot a questioningly look at Barbara. He knew that someone needed to take decisive action, but if he did it, Barbara would never gain back control of the group.

Barbara blew a slow breath out between her lips and stood up. “I’ll go talk to Jason. Of course, any of you are free to leave after what happened last night,” she said clearly, making eye contact with everyone around the table, except for Tim who kept his head down. “If you’re all amenable, I’d like to continue with the investigation today and try to get as much done as possible while we still have sunlight. But, once the sun goes down, the investigation will officially cease. I don’t want to risk what happened last night happening again.”

Hesitantly, Tim’s head came up and he looked at Barbara. There were dark marks under his eyes and his face was more pale than usual. She gave him an apologetic smile. He quickly looked away.

Nodding firmly, Barbara stepped around the breakfast table and made her way out into the hall after Steph and Jason. She heard rattling and raised voices as she made her way toward the front door. She braced herself to break up a fight.

As Barbara came around the corner and out into the main hall, she noticed that both Steph and Jason were fighting, but not with each other. They were both struggling desperately with the door.

“At the danger of repeating myself, what are you two doing?” Barbara asked hesitantly, as she approached the two.

They both turned to look at her, Jason to give her a murderous look. Steph’s expression was confused and panicked.

“The doors won’t open,” Steph responded a little breathlessly.

Barbara frowned at her, the skin between her eyebrows puckering slightly.

“What do you mean, they won’t open?” she asked, walking toward the door. She placed her hand on the handle. Despite both Jason and Steph clutching the handle a few seconds earlier, the metal felt cold and dead in her hand. Barbara squeezed down on the latch and pulled backward. The latch didn’t move and neither did the door.

Frowning deeper, Barbara pressed her other hand down on the top of the latch, but still it didn’t depress. She gave it a few good yanks, but it didn’t budge.

“Gee, did you maybe misplace the key?” Jason sneered, suspicion clear on his face.

“I didn’t lock the door, Jason,” Barbara snapped. She sighed and looked back at the doors. “They’re old doors and it got a little cold last night. Maybe they’re just stuck.”

“That’s a good idea!” Steph piped up. She looked worried, but optimistic. “Are there other exits we can try?” she asked.

“Most of them are around the back,” Barbara answered unhappily. “And the woods around the Manor have really moved in close on all sides. I wouldn’t recommend trying to go around. Let’s try a window,” Barbara sighed.

She walked out of the main hall and into a nearby front parlor. The furniture there was still covered in white drop cloths to protect them from dust. Barbara moved to a nearby window and worked the lock at the top of it free. She then placed her fingertips in the small handholds placed along the bottom edge of the window and lifted with all of her strength. The window didn’t so much as groan or tremble in its frame.

“Did you unlock it?” Jason asked incredulously from somewhere behind her as she strained and strained and got nowhere.

“Yes, I unlocked it,” Barbara huffed as she let go of the window and stood back. She ran a hand through her hair and frowned when it remained tied in a loose bun at the nape of her neck. With a grunt of frustration, she snapped the the rubber band out of her hair and let it fall free.

“Why don’t you try it? You’re stronger than me,” Barbara offered with a raised eyebrow.

Jason took her up on her offer, striding toward the window with confidence. He made a point of looking at the lock, but it was obviously undone. Jason positioned himself the same as Babs had and lifted. His muscles flexed, his arms and shoulders swelling with the effort. He gritted his teeth and grunted as he tried to lift it, but it wouldn’t move.

“Shit!” Jason gasped as he finally let go of the window and stumbled back. “Are they fucking nailed shut or something?” he asked, moving back toward the window. He pressed his forehead to the glass and looked down at the bottom of the frame to see if he could see the heads of any nails holding the window in place.

“Can we try the back doors?” Steph asked tremulously, looking slightly unnerved. “They worked last night, right? Since Tim went outside?”

“Sure,” Barbara agreed, taking Steph by the hand and giving her a slight squeeze. “Let’s try the back,” she said to Jason.

Together, the three of them moved back into the hall and toward the back of the house. Dick noticed them as they walked by the kitchen entrance and followed them out into the hall, Selina trailing behind him.

“What’s up?” Dick asked. “Are you not leaving, now?” he directed at Jason.

“I would leave if I fucking could,” Jason snapped at Dick.

“The front door is stuck,” Barbara said abruptly, cutting the two men off before they could get into it again. “We’re going to try the back doors to see if Jason can get out through there.”

“Stuck?” Dick repeated, his voice disbelieving.

“Trust me, we tried them. They’re not moving for anyone on this side of the veil,” Jason replied.

Barbara reached the patio doors. There were lined against the wall, white french doors with glass frames set in each. She moved toward the closest one and tried the door. The doorknob didn’t rotate. She tried to jimmy it open, but it didn’t even shake in its frame.

Stepping back, Barbara stared at the door, mistified.

“Let me try,” Dick said confidently. He stepped forward and went through much the same process as Barbara. He tried the doorknob, then tried to just shake the door loose to no avail. “Wow, that is really stuck,” Dick breathed after finally giving up and stepping back from the door.

“Fuck this,” Jason snapped, moving around everyone else. He picked up a wooden chair from a nearby wall and stomped meaningfully toward the door.

“Jason!” Barbara screeched. A chorus of yells and talking erupted around Jason as he moved toward the door, but he didn’t take any notice.

He heaved the chair above his head, where it hung in his hands for a brief moment, before he swung it down against the glass with all of his strength. The chair shattered, the legs flying off it and clattering loudly to the floor.

The paint didn’t even chip off the door, nor was there a scratch left behind.

“Okay,” Jason gasped, his chest heaving in a mixture of physical exertion and honest fear. “That is fucked up.”

“The solarium!” Steph yelped. Her face was drained of color and she looked slightly sick with nervousness and fear. “It leads outside! We should try that door next,” she suggested.

Barbara nodded in agreement and lead everyone back to the kitchen. She stopped abruptly in the doorway to the kitchen and looked around.

“What are you guys doing?” Tim asked tiredly.

He sat alone at the table. Barbara looked quickly behind her toward the stairs. She looked around Tim and into the kitchen near the counters. She ignored Tim as he asked her again what she was doing. She looked in the pantry, but it was also empty. Finally, she gave the door to the solarium a cursory attempt. It opened easily in her hand.

Barbara impatiently turned back to Tim.

“Where’s Damian?” she asked.

Tim frowned back at her. “He left to go see what you guys were doing,” Tim replied, seeming confused.

“Damian’s not with us,” Steph interjected, filling in last behind the others. She saw that the solarium door was open and whooped in joy before running past Barbara and out into the solarium.

“He didn’t say anything to me when he left. Maybe he went back to his room or to the bathroom?” Tim suggested.

Steph came running back just as Dick, Jason and Selina were exchanging confused looks. “I can’t get out of solarium,” she gasped, out of breath from running back and forth so quickly. “We’re really trapped, guys.”

“What are you talking about?” Tim asked Steph.

Steph gave Tim a look that said ‘How can you even ask me that?’

“Dick, Damian is missing,” Barbara said quickly, cutting across Tim and Steph’s conversation.

“What?” Dick asked. He cast around the kitchen, looking for Damian himself. He opened his mouth to ask the same questions Barbara had asked, but she cut him off before he could.

“Dick, can you find him?” she asked, pinning him with a look.

He closed his mouth with a click and looked back at her with a confused expression before recognition lit up his face.

“Oh!” he exclaimed “Oh, yeah. Sure.”

Dick closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He centered himself and let his awareness float out. The manor’s surface roiled around him, a confusion of chaos and malignance. Dick pushed it away and focused on the familiar feel of the Wayne heir, his surly countenance and his determined aura. Finally, he found him, deep under the Manor, surrounded by darkness.

Dick’s eyes snapped open, wide and afraid. “Guys, we have to find him,” he gasped out.

* * *

Damian left the kitchen shortly after Dick and Selina departed to follow Barbara, Jason and Steph. But, his aim was not to follow them. He intended to explore as much of the manor as he could in whatever time he had left.

The young Wayne heir wasn’t sure if he would get another chance to walk around the manor unaccompanied, especially considering all the events of the previous night and the effect they were having on the group of investigators. He thought it best not to take his chances and to instead take the initiative into his own hands and investigate.

He decided that he would climb upward first and then work his way down. To this end, Damian climbed the stairs up to the second floor. He continued down the hall toward the back of the manor until he found the set of circling servant stairs that ran from the bottom to the top of the manor. He started to climb.

Gaining a chance not only to enter and explore Wayne Manor had been Damian’s true objective in joining Barbara’s investigation that his father had been trying unsuccessfully to suss out. The young Wayne heir wasn’t about to let that opportunity, possibly the last, slip out from between his fingers.

Damian had been plagued by dreams since he was a young child of Wayne Manor. It was the same dream every time, rarely varying to any degree. He didn’t understand why he kept dreaming the same dream over and over, but he knew that the answer had to be somewhere in his ancestral family home.

The stairway that Damian was in was without windows, the hallway lit by electric lights in wall sconces set regularly along the stairs and landings. The stairs were utilitarian in terms of the normal decorating style of Wayne Manor. The railing was relatively tame and made of medium colored wood polished to a shine. The floor was also wood, but with a deep red carpet runner along the middle of the walkway. The walls were paneled wood on the bottom half and wallpapered with a vertical striped pattern of alternating pale and dark red on the top.

Damian climbed one flight of stairs, then two, then three, then he stopped. At the third landing, the stairs continued upward. Even though that was impossible. There were only three floors in Wayne Manor.

Hesitantly, Damian decided to keep climbing. He continued up to a fourth landing, then a fifth and a sixth.

At the tenth floor, Damian stopped and stared at the door exiting into the hallway. The stairs continued upward as far as he could see. He was slightly out of breath and attributed it to climbing all of those stairs. He didn’t want to consider that the strange staircase might be bothering him.

He knew that Wayne Manor was haunted. He knew that before he had even heard of his father’s planned investigation. He was determined not to let it scare him.

Damian pushed open the door leading off the landing and onto whatever floor he was on. He opened the door onto a thick pervasive darkness. The only light on that floor came from the staircase behind him and an old glass and oil lantern sitting on a rickety wooden chair to the right of the open doorway.

Damian reached over and plucked the nearby lantern up and held it up in front of him. The new height of the lantern illuminated rough hewn walls around him, made of stone and braced with old wooden frames intermittently. The floor was covered in a fine gray gravel.

The lantern only illuminated the underground hallway a few feet in front of him. Whatever Damian was getting himself into, he wouldn’t have much of a chance to prepare himself for whatever was coming. But, Damian was determined to keep pushing on. He took a deep breath and began to advance down the cave-like hallway.

The hallway remained much the same for some fifty feet or so. After that, it started to become rougher and to slope steeply downward. The wooden frames holding up the walls were more infrequent the further that Damian went and the walls were more irregular, sloping in on the left or right.

After walking for ten or fifteen minutes, Damian eventually reached a part of the cave where it opened up onto an underground lake. He could hear rushing water from somewhere nearby. He held his lantern low to the ground and it shone on shining clear water as it lapped quietly at the rocky cave shore.

The young Wayne heir suppressed a shiver. The cave and the lake it terminated at were familiar to him. He saw them most nights in his dreams. He knew he was getting close to his answer.

Damian turned right and began to follow the edge of the water around the edge of the lake. At some points the wall of the cave became very low, but he was able to keep out of the water for the most part.

He estimated that he had traveled maybe 100 feet when he heard something moving in the water to his left.

Damian froze and held his lantern high above his head, the warm yellow light of the flame casting out and reflecting on the surface of the lake. From directly in front of him and out in the water, ripples radiated out toward him. The water lapped gently at the tips of this sneakers.

“Damian,” a raspy feminine voice whispered.

A cold finger ran down his spine at the sound, the voice scratching a rarely reached corner of his mind. A memory stirred in the deep recesses of his mind, but he was unable to shake it loose.

“Who’s there?” Damian called, his voice weaker than he intended.

“Help me,” the voice responded. It sounded closer, now. Indeed, the ripples moving toward him across the water seemed stronger now, their origin moving closer to him.

Damian breathed harshly through his nose and pressed back further from the water. The cold stone wall pressed mercilessly against his shoulders. His hand was shaking slightly where it held the lantern high above his head, the flame dancing slightly with the movement.

“Damian, please help me,” the voice pleaded, moving closer. Emotion was thick in the voice that called to him, tears audible in the words.

As he watched, a female form began to approach the edge of his lantern light. He could only see the edges of her form. The soft curve of feminine shoulders, dark hair tumbling over them, a sharp contrast on her pale skin. It looked like she was wearing a cincher or corset, something that held her waist small and tight.

Damian’s heart was pounding in his chest in a way he was unfamiliar with. He hadn’t felt this fear when he had been approached by the apparition of Lucy Wayne. In fact, he couldn’t recall feeling this kind of fear ever before in his short life.

But, that didn’t feel right, either. This whole scene was eerily familiar. As if he had dreamed it before. But, this wasn’t part of his normal dream. At least, not that he could remember.

The woman moved closer. Long white arms lifted up, hands held palms up in supplication. Her pale skin almost glowed in the lantern light.

“Damian, won’t you help me?” the woman asked as she stepped further into the circle of light.

Objectively, Damian thought she must have been beautiful at one time. She still was, in a way. Her skin was pale, her hair so very very dark. It was long and parted in the middle of her head to tumble in soft waves over her shoulder. She had high well defined cheekbones and a small straight nose. Her brows were dark and nobly arched over dark eyes with long curled black eyelashes. Her lips were a dusky red, thick and bowed.

But, she was very obviously dead.

Her long white neck was ringed by a dark red and purple bruise, blood vessels bursted in extravagant fashion beneath the surface of her skin. Her dark eyes were too dark, no differentiation between iris and pupil and they were dilated, the whites of her eyes just small marks to the left and rights. Her lips were chapped, black slowly seeping from the seam of her mouth and toward the edge of her lips. When she spoke, her straight white teeth were blackened in the spaces between them and her gums black and leaking, her tongue a lolling black muscle in her mouth.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, Damian knew he was in a huge amount of danger. The answer to his dreams may be standing right in front of him. But, even if he stayed and determined the truth, he may not live to enjoy that knowledge.

After a brief hesitation, Damian dashed to his left away from the woman, his feet splashing in the water as he carelessly charged along the shore.

Her rasping laugh followed behind him, echoed around him and seemed to follow and mock him as he ran as quickly as he could back to the path that would lead him back to the staircase. Damian ran frantically and didn’t make much of a point of keeping track of how far he was running. At some point he realized he had run entirely too far and must have missed the entrance to the hall which would lead him back to the staircase.

Panting, Damian turned around and held the lantern out behind him. The woman was just feet behind him, her dark mouth twisted into an ugly smile, her teeth shining in the lantern light.

Sucking in a desperate breath, Damian turned around and kept running. He couldn’t possibly turn back around with her following him. He could only continue to push forward and hope he found an exit to the cave before the shore disappeared or he ran out of energy and she caught him.

Damian kept running and the shore became smaller and smaller. Soon, his sneakers were soaked through and he crashed through the water onward. He could feel panic slowly encroaching on him. If he had to swim, he had little confidence that he could evade the creature behind him.

Water was lapping at Damian’s knees by the time he finally came upon a set of slick and dangerous steps carved into the side of the cave wall.

Damian scrambled up onto them, climbing with both his hands and his feet to help keep himself steady on the dangerously steep and slick steps. Behind him, he could hear the woman calling his name, begging and crying for him to come back. Damian blocked the words out to the best of his ability and continued to frantically climb.

Eventually, he reached a rock outcropping that seemed to jut out over the lake below. Damian ran along it where it butted up against the wall of the cave until he came to a metal door set into the rock wall. He grabbed the handle and yanked with all his strength. The metal door groaned and screeched, but only moved slightly.

Damian heard the creature laugh from somewhere behind him. The sound echoed, making it hard to pinpoint exactly where it was coming from.

The young boy set the sole of his shoe against the wall beside the door and pulled hard, the muscles in his arms and back screaming in protest at the rough treatment even as the adrenaline pumping through his body kept him numb to anything but screaming terror. The door continued to protest, moaning and grumbling as the rusted metal scraped against itself. But, finally, with a sudden pop the door came open and Damian fell backward. He only stopped himself from clocking himself on the back of the head by clinging desperately to the door handle.

All around him, the mocking laugh turned into an enraged scream.

Damian quickly threw himself through the doorway and yanked the metal door shut behind him. It didn’t shut behind him fully, the door still too rusted and warped to shut completely.

He didn’t waste any time trying to secure the door and threw himself forward again. Damian ran full tilt through the small cave he found himself in. This one was very similar to the one he had been in before, a small cave propped up by the occasional wooden frame moving at a gradual incline. At some point, Damian turned a corner and the cave turned into a stone and mortar hallway and then a set of man made stairs.

Damian didn’t pause, just kept pushing forward. His legs pumped frantically behind him. He could hear something moving behind him, like a snake slithering on the loose gravel floor and then over flagstones when the floor changed. Damian’s breath was coming harshly, his lungs burning and his body beginning to feel exhaustion set in as the adrenaline wore off.

The stairs began to spiral as he followed them up. Damian stumbled a few times, but was able to stay upright by holding onto the walls around him. At the top of the spiral staircase was a ladder that lead to a trap door. Damian climbed frantically up the ladder and, once he was at the top, drove the flat of his hand against the underside of the door. He breathed out a sigh of relief when the door flew up and open.

Damian quickly pushed himself up and out of the trap door and rushed forward without bothering to take in his surroundings or to try and close the trap door behind him.

As Damian shot forward, his wet sneakers slipped on the tile floor beneath him. He gasped and threw his hands out in front of him to try and catch his fall, but wasn’t able to stop his head from smacking against the edge of the kitchen counter with a sickening crack.

His vision went black before he hit the floor.


	10. Bruce Wayne

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay in posting for this story! Life and whatnot. Stuff has been bad. But, I'm trying to write regularly again and want to finish this story first.

Bruce woke up early that morning, despite his best efforts to the contrary. He rolled out of bed with a sting of anger already in his gut, upset to be completely awake after spending over an hour trying to fall back asleep. Having given up on that, Bruce showered and dressed before going out into the kitchen to find a full breakfast set out on the dining room table.

“Thanks, Alf,” Bruce mumbled without looking around before sitting down in his usual place and tucking into the meal laid out in front of him.

“You’re quite welcome, Master Bruce,” Alfred replied from the door to the kitchen. “I thought you had intentions to relax this weekend?” he asked.

Bruce grunted around a mouthful of oatmeal and raisins. “Some things just don’t work out the way we want,” Bruce replied wistfully, after he had chewed and swallowed. “Since I’m up, I guess I’ll go into the office and get a little work done,” he added thoughtfully.

“I do wish you would take some time off,” Alfred replied, a frown obvious in his voice.

Bruce gave a noncommittal grunt in reply. He finished off the oatmeal with practiced efficiency and started to cut into the ripe and juicy grapefruit to his right. Once he had eaten all of Alfred’s thoughtfully arranged breakfast, he wiped off his mouth and stood up from the table as Alfred moved to clear away his plates.

“I don’t expect I’ll be very long,” Bruce said as he moved toward the elevator. “I’ll call you before I leave.”

“That would be very thoughtful of you, sir,” Alfred replied with a faint put upon sigh that communicated to Bruce that Alfred really felt that calling was the least he could do.

Bruce gave his trusted friend, father figure and butler an apologetic smile and stepped into the waiting elevator.

He rode it only a few floors down to the executive level. Their penthouse resided on the top floor of the Wayne Enterprises building which made it very convenient to go to and from the office. It being the weekend, the office was virtually deserted except for a lonely janitor vacuuming outside of his office.

“Hey, Frank,” Bruce nodded, greeting the man as he passed by him toward his office.

“Hello, Mr. Wayne,” the janitor responded with a smile and a nod of his own. “You know, you being the boss, you think you could at least give yourself the weekend off,” the man joked.

“There’s no rest for the wicked, Frank,” Bruce joked back, smiling lopsidedly at the older man as he swiped his card over the pad by his door. There was a faint pneumatic hiss as the electronic lock opened.

Frank burst out into a quick shock of laughter. He shook his head as he turned back to vacuuming, muttering something to the effect of, “Ain’t that the truth.”

Bruce pushed the frosted glass door to his office open and entered. The office was just as he left it on Friday evening. His office was cleaned much less often than the rest of the building, due to the high security clearance needed to get in.

Moving directly to his desk, Bruce pulled his keyboard toward him and started to boot up his computer before he noticed the blinking light on his deskphone. Raising an eyebrow, Bruce hit the play button and then the speakerphone button.

Not many people had his desk phone number, so he expected it to be one of his board members blathering on about something he would need to assuage them about later.

Instead, after providing a time stamp of earlier this morning, Barbara’s voice started to play from the speaker.

“Mr. Wayne,” she started, her voice tight with tension even over the phone. Bruce’s eyes immediately focused on the phone, ignoring the array of screens in front of him beginning to boot up. “There’s been a bit of an ... incident,” Barbara continued. “Damian got into a fight with another participant in the investigation. He’s locked himself in a room with them and we think he might have injured him,” Barbara rushed out, the emotion rising in her voice as she continued.

“Please, as soon as you get this, come to Wayne Manor. I thought I could handle him, but I desperately need your help,” Barbara gasped over the phone, her voice audibly thick with tears.

Bruce’s hands were in fists on his desk when the message finished with a loud click. His knuckles were white and his heartbeat pounding was in his ears.

He knew, in a detached sort of way, that this wasn’t something that was out of the realm of possibility for Damian. Damian was unusual. One could probably even say he was mentally unbalanced for a boy his age. But, he was Bruce’s son, so he always pushed that knowledge aside. He was aware, but he also looked away. Getting this kind of call ignited all of his worst fears.

As if in a trance, Bruce found himself standing up and walking briskly around his desk. He walked out of his office and back toward the elevator banks. He heard Frank talking to him as he walked mechanically through the office, but didn’t stop and didn’t turn around.

He stepped into the elevator, swiped his access card and rode it all the way down into his private sub level parking garage. He stepped into the nearest car, roared out of the parking garage and into downtown traffic.

Bruce's glossy black town car tore through traffic. He drove erratically, his mind only fractionally focused on the road. Doubts and justifications and fears crashed and tumbled through his head like tumultuous waters. He wanted to disbelieve the message that he had just received. He was terrified that it was true. He was terrified to the extent of the damage that his son had caused. He didn't know what he would have to do to fix things or how he could protect Damian from his own destructive self in the future. He could only race to get to his son as soon as possible.

In record time, Bruce pushed through the weekend traffic of midtown Gotham, out of the urban center and up onto the grassy cliffs to the north of the city. The roads there weaved side to side up the steep hills and wound dangerously around sharp inclines. The wheels of the car squealed and protested as Bruce pushed it hard around the unforgiving turns of north Gotham's private hills. Quickly, but still too slow for his own taste, Bruce pulled up to the gates of Wayne Manor.

The car screamed to a halt in front of the gates, dust and dirt kicking up under the town car's wheels. Bruce jerked the car into park and jumped out before the dust settled. He had taken one great stride before the gates in front of him groaned and pushed themselves open of their own accord.

Bruce froze in, his mind stalled confused. The gates were old and were usually chained shut. He knew for a fact that there was no motor or any other automation on the gates that would cause them to open without external assistance. It absolutely didn't make any sense.

It also didn't matter.

Setting his jaw hard, Bruce sprinted forward, leaving the car to idle in the driveway behind him. He ran up the front steps, his heart pounding in his chest and his breath heaving through his lungs, and threw himself against the doors. They didn't budge.

"Barbara!" Bruce called, pounding his fist against the heavy wood of the front doors. The loud sound carried through the front yard, bouncing off of the nearby trees back at the Wayne head. But, no other sound came back to him.

With a bit off sound of frustration, Bruce hustled back down the steps and around some nearby hedges to see if he could force his way in through a window. It, too, didn't budge. Expecting the window to be locked, Bruce pushed his way back out of the hedges.

The front door was locked, the windows were locked and nobody seemed to hear him at the door. He needed to either find somebody or find another way inside. He hoped that the back patio or maybe the kitchen door would be open.

The grounds were wildly overgrown compared to when he lived at the manor as a child. Otherwise kindly oak and maple trees had grown wild. Their roots were twisted and pushing up from the ground in frozen writhing masses, their branches reaching desperately down toward the ground.

Bruce pushed impatiently past it all until he was able to stumble out into the relevantly clear backyard. The only real obstacle was the tall unkempt grass. As he strode through the grass, a flash of movement in a nearby window gave him pause.

Bruce turned and moved toward a high set nearby window. The window looked into the large kitchen, over the equally large sink and toward the table set up in the center. Sitting at the table were all the psychics he had allowed Barbara to bring into the Manor, as well as Barbara herself and Damian. Bruce's eyes immediately fixated on his son, sitting sulkily in a wooden dining chair and slowly chomping away at a bowl of cereal.

"Damian!" Bruce yelled, pounding frantically on the glass. He could feel the glass bow and rattle in its frame, the sound loud and clear in the quiet misty morning air around him. But, nobody in the kitchen reacted. No heads came up, there was no shift in the faces he could see, not even a blink. Bruce raised his voice louder and pounded even harder, with intentions to shatter the glass if he could. Still, no one reacted.

At one point, one of the smaller and younger men in the room (pale with dark hair and sharp eyes) looked up and over at the window. He was clearly looking at him, his dark eyes rimmed in red with dark smudges of sleeplessness underneath. After looking at the window for a short moment, the young man looked away again without any indication that he had seen Bruce at the window.

Bruce's heart continued to pound with panic in his ears, even though he could now see his son and all the entirety of the psychic team safely in the kitchen. He couldn't believe that nobody heard him pounding on the front door if they were all sitting in the kitchen. He couldn't believe that they couldn't hear him pounding on the window and screaming when they were sitting just a few feet away. He couldn't believe that the young man at the table looked right at him and didn't seem him or decided to ignore him. Something was very wrong there.

Panic pounding through his veins, Bruce turned on his heel and made toward the closest entrance to the kitchen, the solarium.

The door to the solarium stood open and, distantly, Bruce thought of how he wasn't looking forward to going through it. It was an area that his mother greatly appreciated and one he spent a lot of time in with her. He knew it would look very different now than it had then. The vibrant greens and pops of colorful flower blooms had degraded into dark and dusty browns and grays. But, the memories and ghosts didn’t matter. He felt that he needed to get to Damian as soon as possible.

Bruce had intentions of pushing through the solarium and to the kitchen door as quickly as possible. But, instead, he was arrested again by a flicker of movement in the corner of his eye.

Turning slowly, Bruce looked toward the far corner of the solarium, mostly obscured by dried and dead vegetation hanging from sad broken trestles and wooden frames. Somewhere behind all the washed out colors, a pale pink.

Bruce moved toward it cautiously, pushing dead vegetation out of his way as he moved further back into the room. He heard the bees before he found their nest. Built into the high corner of the dirty glass walls was a bee's nest, filled with milling insects and their hum of activity. Standing directly beneath the nest was Vicki Vale.

She was sickly pale, her pallor yellow and waxy with dark blotches underneath her eyes. Her normally glossy bottle red hair was greasy and hanging limp over her shoulders. Her khaki pants were stained and ripped at the knees and her soft pink cashmere sweater was smudged with dirt. The most disturbing thing about her appearance were the bees that were milling all over her head, face and body. She stood still and unmoving, dark sightless eyes staring blankly at where Bruce was standing, as the bees crawled freely all over her.

"Vicki," Bruce rasped, reaching out for her with his hands palm up. "Are you okay?"

"Bruce," Vicki replied. Her voice sounded like the rasping of dry grass rubbing together.

"You don't look very well," Bruce said, taking a cautious step toward her. "Will you please step away from there?"

"You're going to die," Vicki intoned solemnly, seemingly ignoring what Bruce said.

Bruce's eyebrows drew down low over his eyes as he frowned at the reporter. "What do you mean by that?" Bruce asked slowly, making an effort to keep his voice calm. He took another cautious step toward Vicki.

"I meant exactly what I said," Vicki snapped out, showing the first sign of emotion that Bruce had seen since finding her. Her lip curled and her carefully articulated eyebrows beetled. "You and your son are going to die here. And, anyone who tries to help you will share your fate!"

"Vicki, you don't mean that," Bruce said slowly. "Let me help you. I'll take you back to Gotham and we can sort this all out."

Vicki's face collapsed from boiling anger into disparate despair at his words.

"I wish I had never met you, Bruce Wayne," she rasped.

"Vicki," Bruce breathed. He took another cautious step, and she was just barely within his grasp. He stretched his hand out to take her by the arm, when a loud bang sounded from behind him.

Bruce whipped his head around. The bang had come from near the kitchen. He thought it might have been someone throwing the door open violently.

Taking a breath, Bruce turned around to again ask Vicki to come with him. She looked and sounded seriously disturbed and despite their rough interactions of late, he still worried for her welfare.

But, as he turned around, Bruce saw that she was gone. He hand was reaching out to thin air and the sound of buzzing had conspicuously disappeared. There were no bees and no Vicki. Just an empty dusty bee's nest attached to the corner.


	11. Trapped

For Dick, his visions were rarely pleasant or helpful. If there was some kind of intelligent sentient force feeding his visions to him, Dick would have really like to give them a piece of his mind. The piece he'd like to give them would be his fist in their face.

Many of his visions, some that he neither wanted nor could prevent, revealed to Dick incredibly unpleasant images of terrible things happening to people he knew or loved. They also usually occurred mere moments before the event itself, making them nearly useless. This was exactly the case with his parents' death. This was the same case with Damian.

As Dick closed his eyes and concentrated on the distinctive signature that was Damian's essence, he saw in a flash a vision of the young Wayne heir walking in a cavern deep beneath the earth. He was holding a small lantern containing a flickering flame and was surrounded by crystal clear and tasteless water. The water was biting cold and sloshed around the boy's knees with each step he took. Welling up behind Damian in the meager light thrown by his small lantern was a black amorphous form, growing and spreading out behind Damian like a great beast getting ready to devour him whole.

Dick's whole body seized up with fear, but just like all of his visions that he had experienced in the past, he couldn't move or make a sound. The black mass twisted and thrashed until it worked itself about into the approximate form of a woman with long dark hair that writhed, moved, and merged with the darkness around them. Its fingers were long, and bent, and tipped with long sharp claws.

Damian pushed slowly through the water, his breath coming faster, and his steps moving with more purpose as the black mass gained on him from behind. Soon, the creature was close enough that Dick could see it had the appearance of a beautiful woman. By that point, Damian was running as quickly as he could manage with the water around his feet slowing him down. He ran feverishly, desperately, but never put any distance between himself and the creature behind him.

When Dick felt sure that he couldn't possibly watch the horrible scene unfold before him any further, the Damian in his vision lost his footing and went crashing into the water. As he did, there was a sharp crack under laid with a dull thud. Damian laid where he fell, face down in the water. Bright red blood bloomed into the water around his head. Somewhere in the darkness, the creature breathed out a raspy laugh.

Dick came back to himself in a flash. He opened his eyes and gasped, even as his body ached and his stomach turned with nausea.

"Guys, we have to find him," Dick gasped.

Babs reached forward and squeezed his arms in a steadying grip.

"Did you see him?" Barbara asked, something like fear shining in her eyes.

"Yeah," Dick croaked. "In my vision, I got the impression he was underground. Or, somewhere dark, anyway. He was standing in water and something was stalking him." Dick paused, panic clutching at his heart. "Barbara, in my vision, Damian gets seriously hurt. We need to find him quickly, before that happens."

Barbara’s expression hardened and her lips thinned. "Okay, everyone!" Barbara snapped "Spread out and find Damian as soon as possible. All of you!" she yelled.

Panic starting to set in, everyone shot off in small groups out the kitchen door. Their footsteps echoed through the empty mansion as they spread out across the huge structure. After the others had left, Barbara nodded sharply at Dick before turning on her heel and walking swiftly out of the kitchen.

Dick stood alone in the large empty kitchen, still a little shaken by the vision he had just experienced. He forced himself to focus on the details of his vision, trying to determine the best place to start searching for Damian. Time was of the essence and he couldn’t afford to look everywhere.

Other than the water and the darkness, there were no identifiable landmarks or characteristics Dick could remember to indicate Damian’s location. That meant they were running blind and he hated the feeling of uncertainty knowing that left him with. Scolding himself, Dick pushed himself into action, knowing that standing around in the kitchen doing nothing wasn’t going to help him find Damian any sooner.

Dick exited the kitchen and then stood outside the door debating with himself as to where to go first. Somehow, going up felt right. His intuition was pulling him toward the staircase. But, in Dick’s vision, Damian was almost certainly underground. He was already on the first floor and wasn’t sure how to get any lower in the mansion. Surely it had a basement, but so far the only sub level he had found was the small wine cellar in the kitchen that he had already explored fully yesterday. There hadn’t been any water, let alone a cavernous space there.

Dick started to walk hesitantly toward the staircase when a sound all too familiar froze him in his tracks. Slightly muffled by the closed door behind him, Dick heard the sound of a sharp crack followed by the dull thump of something heavy and soft hitting the floor.

Heart in his throat, Dick turned on his heel and threw the kitchen door open. The door slammed loudly against its frame before bouncing back. The sound echoed through the cavernous hall and nearly empty kitchen.

As Dick came to an abrupt stop inside the kitchen, he saw Damian stretched along the tile floor. He was lying face down and bleeding from his temple. Thick dark red blood drained from the wound and onto the tiles where it filled in the cracks and spread out. The door to the pantry was open directly behind him, the trap door to the wine cellar thrown open. There was a smudge of blood and a few black hairs stuck to the edge of the counter.

Collapsing to his knees beside Damian’s prone body, Dick’s hands hovered uncertainly over the unconscious boy. He faintly remembered taking a first aid class in high school, but nothing that he learned there was coming to him. His first instinct was to flip Damian over, pick him up and maybe even shake him. But, he had a head injury and might have even hurt his neck, so Dick was terrified to move him.

Fighting against the panic turning his stomach all to knots, Dick put trembling fingers in front of Damian’s open mouth and nose and breathed out a grateful sigh of relief at the feel of the boy’s faint breath against his skin.

Dick hesitantly started to look Damian over for any injuries other than the crack to his head when the sound of footsteps on the tile floor brought his head up.

Standing in the door frame was Bruce Wayne, his figure huge and imposing, his chest and shoulders heaving and his eyes looking half wild as he scanned the kitchen before alighting on Damian and Dick both on the kitchen floor. He was so immediately recognizable to Dick, even though he had only seen him briefly during the orientation, his appearance was so striking.

Bruce stalked quickly over to Damian and Dick, his hands flexing into fists and his expression thunderous. Dick had to consciously tell himself not to flinch away from the imposing man.

“What happened?” Bruce snapped, crouching down by Damian’s head.

"I don't know," Dick answered hesitantly, moving back to make room for Bruce to crowd closer over his unconscious son. "I was standing outside the kitchen door when I heard someone fall. When I got here, he was lying like this," Dick explained, his voice growing faint toward the end. The boy who was sulking over a bowl of cereal a few minutes ago hardly looked like he could be the same boy lying prone on the floor. His body was so still, his face looked so different while relaxed in sleep.

Bruce pressed two fingers against his son's thin neck and was relieved to feel the flutter of a pulse press against his fingertips. He pressed the palm of his hand against Damian's back, the feel of his son’s body solid under his hand somewhat steadying.

Taking a deep breath, Bruce pinned Dick with a probing look. "What happened to the other participant?" Bruce asked lowly.

Dick stared at him, frozen in confusion and racking his brain for a response that wouldn't sound stupid to the man who practically owned half of the city.

"Who...?" Dick asked slowly, disappointed with himself as soon as the word left his mouth.

"The person who was locked in with Damian," Bruce responded shortly.

"I ... don't know what you're talking about," Dick said cautiously.

With a bit off sound of rage, Bruce stood up and stalked a few steps away from Damian.

"I've been with Damian since last night until this morning at breakfast," Dick added quickly, trying to explain. "So far as I know, he hasn't been locked in anywhere with anyone."

"Where's Barbara?" Bruce snapped, turning quickly on Dick.

Dick hesitated for a moment, before replying, "She's in the Manor somewhere."

"I'm right here," Barbara's voice rang out, sounding slightly breathless as she walked confidently into the kitchen. Her steps faltered as Damian's prone body came into view, but she kept her expression and voice under tight control.

Striding quickly over to Dick, she asked, "What happened?"

"I don't know," Dick said, getting ready to quickly repeat what he had already told Bruce. "I was standing outside the kitchen and heard a noise. When I came back in, I found Damian lying on the floor."

Barbara's brow furrowed at Dick's explanation. "How is that possible?" she asked, kneeling down beside Dick. Her fingertips brushed the back of Damian's sweat soaked shirt. "We were all in the kitchen and the doors were stuck. The only place he could have been was the wine cellar and I thought that disappeared?"

"I'm calling an ambulance," Bruce growled, pulling his phone from his pocket. He turned away from Dick and Barbara, tapping insistently at his phone's screen.

"Dick, is he okay?" Barbara whispered urgently, her voice low and her expression anxious.

Dick nodded slightly and whispered back, "Yeah, I think he's okay. I think he just knocked himself unconscious. But, I have no idea where he's been." Dick then cut his eyes to the bottom of Damian's pants and shoes. The bottom of the boy’s jeans, socks, and shoes were all sopping wet. Small beige pieces of sand were visible around the soles of his shoes, as well.

Barbara and Dick shared a puzzled and worried look before they were shocked out of their silent communication by the sound of Bruce cursing and whipping his phone at the kitchen floor.

Standing hesitantly, Barbara stepped toward the Wayne family head. "Bruce?" she asked cautiously.

Bruce roughly ran his hand over his face and muttered, "There's no signal."

Gently, Babs placed a hand on Bruce's elbow. "It looks like Damian will be okay," she said gently. "He hit his head on the counter, but he's breathing evenly and the cut on his head has already clotted. He'll most likely wake up at any moment and we can ask him what happened."

"No, Barbara, I want to ask you what happened," Bruce said, pulling his arm away from her and turning to face her squarely. "What happened this morning? What was that voice mail about?"

"My voice mail?" Barbara responded, "It was in regards to some strange events last night. One of our participants felt threatened physically by one of the apparitions they encountered and it's spooked the rest of my team. We were seriously considering stopping the investigation, but I wanted to consult with you first."

Bruce made an impatient sound and waved the information away. "No, what did you mean about Damian? You said he had locked himself into a room with another participant. What happened?"

Barbara frowned and shook her head slowly. "Bruce, I didn't say anything like that in my message."

"Yes, you did!" Bruce's strong voice boomed through the kitchen, easily carrying around the rest of the manor. Visibly pulling himself back under control, Bruce modulated his voice, "You did. You left a message on my desk phone saying exactly that and asking me to come here right away."

"I don't disbelieve you," Barbara said quickly. "Bruce, this place is beyond active. It's gotten to the point that I'm no longer concerned about proving that this place is haunted, but protecting the people here from it."

"Are you proposing that the house called me?" Bruce rejoined, skepticism thick in his voice.

"I know it sounds crazy, but there have been numerous studies showing that spirit energy is able to manipulate electromagnetic fields and tamper with and even leave their voices on recording devices," Barbara explained before being interrupted by the sound of a pair of feet pounding down the stairway above the kitchen entrance and then into the kitchen itself.

"What's going- Oh," Jason stopped, noticing the imposing figure of Bruce Wayne standing in the middle of the kitchen and Damian lying on the floor. Steph peeked nervously around Jason and gasped at the sight of their youngest participant. She elbowed Jason out of the way to run over and join Dick on the floor beside Damian.

"What happened?" Jason asked, stepping closer to Damian.

"I really wish everyone would stop asking that," Dick muttered.

"Damian fell and hit his head, but none of us know how or where he came from," Barbara said shortly.

"How the hell did he get in here?" Jason asked, impertinently pointing an impatient finger at Bruce.

"Through the door," Bruce growled, cutting Babs off before she could try to answer Jason.

Everyone in the room froze at Bruce’s explanation with the exception of Bruce himself, who looked around at all of their astonished faces like they had just lost their minds.

"Oh, my god. The door is open," Jason breathed, before sprinting through the kitchen door, through the Solarium and out into the backyard. The sun was climbing higher in the sky and a faint breeze was ruffling the high grass.

Jason only allowed himself to enjoy the feeling of the sun and wind against his skin for a brief moment before turning around and running back to the kitchen.

"Guys," he said breathlessly. "The door is open. We can leave." When everyone stared at him without moving, he added loudly, "Come on! Let's go!"

"I'm not going anywhere until I know what the hell is going on here," Bruce shot back, his face contorting into an ugly scowl.

"We can't leave without the others, anyway!" Barbara added quickly. "They're probably still spread out all over the Manor looking for Damian."

"And, we can't move Damian, yet! He has a head wound, for Christ's sake," Dick added frantically. "But, I do think that someone should go get help. "There was a gas station further down the road, I think. Whoever goes can call for help from there."

"Who's going to go?" Steph asked hesitantly.

All four of them turned to look at Jason, whose hands were still braced on the door frame.

"Fuck that!" he snapped at them. "Where's Tim?"

"How are we supposed to know?" Dick snapped back. "Why wasn't he with you? Besides, what does it matter where he is?"

A guttural growl started in Jason's chest at the accusing questions, but it was silenced by the sound of Damian muttering faintly. For the second time in as many minutes, everyone in the room froze. They all turned to look at Damian, who was beginning to stir.

As soon as they took notice of Damian, the house gave a strange moan, a deep bass sound that ran under their feet. After the groaning and vibrating, the sound of great crashes could be heard all around the Manor. Behind Jason, the kitchen door swung shut with enough force to rattle all the windows in the room. Jason was able to pull his hand away only at the last moment to avoid losing all of his fingers.

Once the crashing and humming stopped, the house grew quiet again. They all looked at each other and knew that they were trapped again.


	12. Memory

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dick and Damian work together to determine his connection to the Manor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry that it took so long to get this chapter out. It fought me so hard! Bluh. D:

Hours later finds all of them gathered in the sitting room. Night had fallen quickly and they combated it with a roaring fire in the hearth.

Bruce and Damian were sitting together on one of the couches closer to the fire. Bruce's expression was stony and indicated deep introspection. He had just spent the last few hours in heated conversation with Barbara as she went over all the reported experiences as well as her own first hand experiences in the house. Seated beside him, but still an awkward three feet away, was Damian. He had white gauze wrapped around his head, holding a thicker piece square of gauze to his right temple. Bright red blood left a red spot on the bright white of the bandage, but Damian didn't seem to be aware of it or just didn't care. He looked strangely tired and withdrawn, his body tucked into the far corner of the couch.

Steph, Tim, and Selina were seated on the couch directly opposite of Bruce and Damian. All three were quiet and reserved, only occasionally whispering to each other.

Barbara had set up much of her recording equipment on the far side of the room and her deft hands were flickering back and forth between different panels of buttons, sliders, knobs and print outs while Dick hovered nervously behind her. She had been monitoring different sets of data that were only anomalous to her trained eye and had mostly ignored the stewing company seated in the middle of the room.

Jason sat in an armchair by himself with his arms crossed over his broad chest and his mouth turned down into an angry frown, bleeding resentment and frustration into the air.

"Why are we all sitting here pouting, when we all know what we have to do to escape?" Jason spat when the sustained silence finally became too much for him.

"Nobody knows what you're talking about," Selina replied, a warning in her voice.

Jason ignored her implied warning and continued loudly. "Come on!" he snapped. "The brat knocks himself out and suddenly all the doors are thrown open. The moment he wakes up, they slam shut again. What am I supposed to think? That it was just a coincidence?"

"Even if there was some causation between Damian and our imprisonment, it’s not as if we can do much with that information," Tim replied tiredly.

"What are you talking about?" Jason snapped. "We knock the brat out and carry him out the door with us!"

“And how do you propose we knock him out?” Tim replied angrily, a life that wasn’t present before bleeding into his body. “Anything that knocks a person out is inherently dangerous.”

“I’m not saying we take a frying pan to the back of his head!” Jason snapped back, becoming more upset every second. “But, there’s no reason we can’t give him some Benadryl or something and wait for him to konk out!”

"Nobody is doing anything to Damian," Bruce warned, his voice low and his eyes flashing with violence.

Jason paused and leaned back in his chair despite himself.

"While I don't agree with Jason's plan, I do think that Damian is a big piece of this puzzle," Barbara said brusquely, inserting herself into their conversation for the first time since she retreated to her set up of machines. She pushed a few buttons before walking over to Damian and kneeling in front of him. Damian kept his gaze forward. He hadn't reacted to anything that anyone had said or did with more than a grunt for hours.

"Damian," Barbara said gently. "You haven't told us what happened to you this morning and that's fine. But, Jason is right. You have to have some kind of connection to the manor for it to react that way to you."

Damian fidgeted, trying to press himself further into the couch. "I don't remember what happened before I fell," he mumbled, reiterating the same thing he had said multiple times since waking up.

Barbara leaned forward, determination making her features stiff despite the gentle smile she displayed. "Besides the fall, have you ever been to the Manor before? Or, have you had dreams or feelings before you got here? You can tell me and I'll believe you, because it's my business to believe you," Barbara said with a self-deprecating smile.

"Damian has never been to the manor before this weekend," Bruce answered on behalf of his surly son. Damian fidgeted slightly beside his father, his eyes cutting away to the right.

"Damian," Barbara said again, pointedly ignoring Bruce. "Have you ever been to the manor before?"

Damian held very still before the united probing gaze of everyone in the room (including and especially his father), before replying quietly, "Once."

"When?" Bruce growled, causing Damian to frown down at his knees press further into the cushions.

Barbara quickly cut him off. "Can you tell us about the other time you came to the manor?" she asked gently.

After a pause, Damian explained, "When I was very young, maybe five or six, I remember coming here with Mother during the day while Father was at work. I'm not sure why we came or what she was looking for, but I wandered off by myself."

"Did anything happen when you were by yourself," Barbara asked, trying to control the interest in her voice.

Damian fidgeted again in his seat, an embarrassed flush dusting his cheeks. "I only remember bits and pieces," he bit out, sounding frustrated with his own faulty memory. "I remember seeing parts of the manor: bedrooms, hallways, the mirror library. I think I spoke to someone who was not Mother. But, I can't remember anything other than that."

Barbara breathed out a sigh of disappointment. What Damian described didn't reveal to her anything of value, other than a vague chance that Damian might have some kind of connection to the Manor outside of just being Bruce’s son. Bruce sat beside Damian on the couch, staring at him as if he could deduce the mystery Damian’s connection to the strange occurrences in the manor with his piercing stare alone.

Standing, Barbara turned away and ran a hand through her hair. She wracked her brain for some kind of answer other than the one proposed by Jason. They were trapped in the Manor and, if Tim's experience was any indication, the spirits inside the Manor were powerful enough to do real harm to them. Not to mention that, from the readings she was getting on her machines, the spirits were becoming more active and, possibly, more powerful.

All points of egress were closed to them. Even windows which should be easily broken held up to unnatural amounts of force. They had food and water, but no way of knowing how long it would hold out or if they would live long enough to go through it all.

Turning back to the group at large, Barbara appealed to all of them, "Can any of you think of anything that might help in any way?"

From the far side of the room, Dick hesitantly raised his hand.

"Dick?" Babs asked, furrowing her brow at him.

"I think," Dick paused, "that I might be able to help," he stated hesitantly.

The rest of the heads in the room swiveled to look at him as he cleared his throat and walked over to Damian. He took the place Barbara was previously and kneeled in front of Damian.

Smiling warmly, he explained, "I can do this, uh, thing! Sometimes, if I focus and the person I'm working with also focus on the same thing, I can induce visions in other people. It doesn't always work, but sometimes it does! Besides, I have a good feeling it will work in this case."

"Why do I need to have a vision?" Damian asked bluntly, frowning at Dick.

"Well, we wouldn't focus on a vision, exactly. More like, on your memory of what happened the first day you came to the Manor," Dick replied.

At this, Damian seemed to perk up. Sitting forward a little, he fixed Dick with a probing look not unlike the one his father was currently pointing toward him.

"You think that you might be able to help me remember what happened?" he asked.

"Again, it may or may not work. And, some visions are more clear and literal than others. But, I have a good feeling about this," Dick said confidently.

Damian was quiet for a long moment, holding Dick's gaze and trying gauge his sincerity. After he had come to an internal conclusion, he nodded.

"I want to try it," Damian said firmly. Dick grinned widely at the boy in return.

"Is this safe?" Bruce asked, worry wrinkling the skin around his eyes.

"Absolutely," Dick replied. "The worst that might happen is that nothing happens at all," he added with an unhappy smile.

"How do we do this?" Damian asked impatiently.

"Well, usually I have the person I'm working with lay down on their back with their head on my lap and I put my hands over their ears, sort of," Dick explained. "But, you can be sitting or you can lay down on the couch. It's usually just safer if we're both on the floor."

Damian grunted in agreement and crawled down to lay on the floor in front of the fireplace.

"Why is safer?" Bruce asked, worry still dogging his words.

Dick laughed nervously. "In case one of us keels over," he explained.

Bruce's frown deepened. "That's not very funny," he growled.

Dick laughed again, despite himself. "You’re right. It’s not.” Coughing, he cleared his throat and wiped the nervous smile off of his face with conscious effort.

"He laughs when he's nervous," Barbara said. She looked surprised that she had said that out loud when everyone's heads turned to look at her. "I mean, that's what I think," she added.

"Exactly," Dick agreed, trying to psychically pass his thanks to Barbara through sheer willpower.

"I'm ready," Damian announced impatiently from the floor. He was lying ramrod straight on his back, his arms crossed across his chest, and staring angrily at the ceiling.

"Okay, okay," Dick answered, moving to kneel behind Damian before lifting his head up and pushing his knees underneath.

Once Damian's head was comfortably situated on his lap, Dick advised Damian, "Move your hands to your sides. Try to relax and focus on your breathing. If you've ever meditated before, this should be similar to that."

Damian followed Dick's directions and relaxed his arms and body as much as he could, focusing on the in and out movement of his breath and clearing his mind of everything in it as well as he could. He still felt stiff and anxious. He very much wanted this to work. He wanted answers now more than ever.

Dick carefully pressed the palms of his hands to the sides of Damian's face, covering his ear.

"Now, the both of us should focus on the day that you're trying to remember. Nobody should touch us or try to talk to us while we're doing this," Dick said to Damian, but mostly for the benefit of the other people in the room.

Damian strove to relax his body. He called on some advice a guidance counselor had provided him years ago that he had dismissed easily at the time. Starting from his feet, Damian methodically stiffened the muscles in his body. He flexed his toes, his shins, thighs, stomach, shoulders, neck, arms and hands until every muscle in his body was tight and singing in exertion. Then, in reverse order, he let the tension go. Hands, arms, neck, shoulders, stomach, thighs, shins and finally his toes uncurled. The young boy heaved a heavy sigh, the tension and worry seeming to flow away from him as he released his tense muscles. Afterward, he found it much easier to relax his mind and body and focus on the missing parts of his memory.

Dick was very still where he sat above him. He practiced a type of meditation, as well. His was more inwardly turned, focused on channeling his energy into Damian as well as funneling the energy radiating off of Damian into his hands and up into his head. In his mind's eye, he created a circuit between himself and the young boy, Damian's energy flowing into him through his right hand and his energy flowing out to Damian through his left hand.

They sat in front of the quietly crackling fire for a number of long minutes. Long enough for the other people in the room to fidget uncertainly. Then, slowly, an image came into focus for Dick.

* * *

In front of Dick, the Manor rose up high high above his head, blocking out the sun. It looked much larger than he remembered. This was quickly put into focus when he looked to his left and saw a beautiful woman holding a small pudgy hand. Dick's point of view started somewhere around the woman's hip.

The woman was pretty, from what little Dick could see. She had dark skin and darker hair that was partially hidden under a pretty white and beige handkerchief. She was dressed in a sharp black blazer with a tight black pencil skirt with stockings and patent black high heels that she had no problem using to navigate the uneven gravel surface of the driveway.

The woman pulled him in the body of a child that Dick could only assume was Damian behind her by the hand as she ascended the imposing front steps. Once at the huge double doors, she used a key she produced from a fashionable looking purse to unlock the doors. There was a great clanking and moaning as the doors opened to admit the two of them.

As the woman stepped inside, she let go of Dick’s small hand and pulled her sunglasses away from her face to reveal sharp and intelligent looking almond shaped eyes edged in dark makeup. Without saying anything to the child she had left standing in the entrance way, the woman walked slowly forward until she reached a hall table on her left. She opened the drawer and started to riffle through the contents.

Dick watched her for a few minutes before he started to look around at the mansion. No lights had been turned on, so much of the interior was still cast in thick dark shadows. The setting sun streaked through the windows along the exterior facing rooms and painted everything in golds and browns. Like apparitions, furniture covered in white sheets stood motionless in the many rooms branching off of the main hall.

Slowly, the younger version of Damian began to wander deeper into the dark main hall. Dick was a passenger in Damian’s tiny body. He didn’t fight as the memory of Damian advanced slowly down the main hall. Damian walked close to the wall, periodically running his small hand against the polished dark wood. He walked slowly toward the back of the Manor, passing the kitchen door and the grand hall toward the patio doors leading to the backyard.

He reached up with his small hand to turn the doorknob of the back door when a faint voice behind him called his name.

Damian turned around quickly, casting around everywhere for the source of the voice. Not finding anything, Damian ran quickly back to the front door where his mother was still rifling through drawers and cabinets by the light coming through the open doors. She didn't look up when Damian walked up to her, continuing to scour the manor for whatever she was looking for.

Dick wondered at the woman's behavior. Surely she was Damian's mother, wasn't she? She shared his darker skin and his fuller mouth. Why wasn’t she speaking to him? Neither of them had said a word to the other since the memory began.

Dick’s vision started to flicker and fade and, with a hard mental shake, Dick forced himself to focus on the events at hand. If he fought the experience or separated himself too much from Damian’s memory, the whole thing would fall apart. Letting his own thoughts bleed into the memory would only serve to break the trance before it was complete.

While Damian stared at his mother's back, the sound of his name came to him again, more distant this time.

Curiosity without fear tinged the memory as Damian turned around and stared off into the dark part of the hall. As he watched, he heard his name again.

He turned around to look at his mother one last time, but she hadn't looked up and showed all appearances of having not heard the voice.

With slower steps than before, Damian walked back to the large open staircase where it sounded like the voice was coming from. He paused at the foot of the steps and the voice came again. It sounded like it came from the stairs themselves.

Damian climbed onto the first step, something of a process for his small body to balance and climb. He paused there and waited, listening carefully, but only the sound of papers shushing quietly against one another could be heard from behind him. Determined, Damian climbed another step and then another. There was some struggling and some stumbling, but eventually he reached the top.

It was even darker at the top of the stairs. There were no windows with the exception of one at the end of each hall and the light from the open front doors were especially faint there. Damian faltered and Dick could feel his thoughts tip toward returning to his mother. It was too dark. He didn’t want to be alone upstairs.

Then, the voice came again. It was clearer this time, too. The voice of a child, probably a little girl. There was a giggle and then a door that was sitting slightly ajar down the hall swung closed with an audible click.

The fear Damian was feeling was whisked away quickly. Dick could feel Damian swell with excitement at the thought that there was another child there. One who might want to play with him. He ran forward recklessly and threw the door open. He found himself in a bedroom, but there was no little girl. Just another door sitting slightly open on the other side of the room.

Damian moved toward it without hesitation. As he did so, the memory started to break up again, but Dick recognized it for what it was.

Damian’s memory of this next part was weak and fragmented. Dick only got glimpses of what happened next.

He saw Damian running wildly through bedrooms, down hallways, climbing through wardrobes and coming out in different rooms all while chasing the little girl. She would always be right ahead of him, giggling. Sometimes he would catch sight of her leg disappearing around a corner, a flash of a dark blue pleated skirt, the bounce of a black pigtail.

Dick saw flashes of familiar rooms. There was the diminishing hallway, the upside down office and finally even the mirror library.

Dick felt Damian’s exhilaration, his happiness, the pounding of his small heart against his ribs as he tore laughing through the manor.

Suddenly, the memory came back into sharp focus.

Running quickly down a case of stairs covered in thick red carpet, Damian turned his head this way and that to consider the stairs from different angles. Where had the voice come from? He had lost track of the little girl, but surely not for long?

As he turned the question over, one of the wood panels making up the side of the staircase groaned and popped open.

The voice came again, breathy and almost certainly a woman, calling, "Damian..."

Confused, but still without fear, Damian walked up to the hidden door and pulled it open. "Hello?" he called, his voice higher than it currently was, but echoing his normal confidence.

No voice answered him, but the sigh of wind carried up out of the dark stairwell carrying with it the brush of a cool wet air.

The stairs that existed behind the hidden door were inexplicably cut out of stone and ran downward past what Damian could see. Bare electric bulbs strung along wires lined the steps.

The little boy only paused for a moment at the top of the stairs before starting downward, holding onto the wall to help keep his balance as his short legs struggled to descend the steep steps. He walked downward for a long time, the air becoming cooler and more humid as he went.

When Damian finally reached the bottom of the staircase, he looked back up at where he had come from, but there was no light save that from the softly humming bare light bulbs. The ground he found himself on was solid rock, slippery with moisture and appeared to be naturally formed. Oddly, there was an old worn wooden chair sitting by the bottom of the staircase. A single rusty oil lantern with a small flickering flame sat on the chair’s seat.

Damian looked at the lantern doubtfully. It was big and probably hot around the glass and flame, so it might be hard for him to carry. He then looked out at the darkness all around him. The soft sound of water moving was the only sound in the cavernous dark space he found himself in.

Deciding that he couldn't possibly advance without it, despite how hard it might be to handle, Damian reached out and picked up the lantern by the handle. It swung and the flame flickered slightly, but didn't gutter or go out.

The voice came again, still an adult female voice, pleading faintly from the darkness for Damian. The young Wayne heir mustered his determination and walked steadily into the darkness and toward the source of the voice.

He didn't have to travel far before he found himself at a nexus of water and dark stone and found the source of the voice. The dark water splashed gently against the worn gravel ground before coming up to meet the softly curved stone ceiling of the cave. From the cave roof Damian could just make out a kind of metal hook that looked rough and rusted. From the hook wound a long thick piece of rope. At the end of the rope was a noose and in the noose was the long bruised neck of a woman.

The woman hung limply from the noose, her head tilted forward and long greasy black hair hanging like a curtain over her face. Her body hung just as limply, a ragged black skirt swinging against her bare dirty and bloodied feet.

"Hello?" Damian's young voice called out, the first tremor of fear running through him at the appearance of the woman. Dick was somewhat shaken to realize that, in his naivete, Damian's fear was for the woman's well being, not his own. He had understanding of what it meant for someone to hang by their neck.

At the boy's voice, the woman's hand twitched and reached out for him. The same voice that had calling for him since he found the secret entrance to the caves emanated from behind the thick dark curtain of her hair.

"Damian, please help me," the woman pleaded pitifully.

The young boy's heart quickened in his chest. "How can I help you?" he asked, pre-preemptively sitting the lantern down.

"Will you help me?" she asked as if she hadn't heard him.

"Yes!" Damian said back, panic straining through his young voice. "Just tell me how!"

As if his words themselves had cut the rope, the woman dropped from the ceiling and landed easily on the balls of her feet, crouching low, her hands landing limply on the ground beside her feet. She straightened slowly, bones popping, ligaments creaking as she righted herself.

Damian took a cautious step back, the first niggling concern that something was wrong bubbling up in his chest.

The woman leaned forward and held out her hand, the fingers folded in. Damian took notice that blood and dirt were crusted around the edges of her fingernails.

"Thank you, Damian," she breathed. Her fingers slowly unfolded to reveal a small piece of candy wrapped in glossy black wax paper. "You helped me. This is for you," she said, her voice lilting up in indication of a smile that Damian couldn't see behind her hair.

His fear dying down again, Damian reached out and took the candy from her hand. Her skin was cold and damp against his own small blunt fingertips.

Damian unwrapped the candy slowly, glancing up at the woman doubtfully a few times as he did so. She appeared to watch him raptly, but he couldn't know for sure with her face hidden behind her hair.

Dick felt a thrill of happy excitement run through Damian once he had pulled open the wrapper and found that a hard black candy was hidden inside the equally dark paper. He assumed that meant that the kid must like black licorice.

Without any hesitation, Damian happily popped the candy into his mouth and was pleased as the taste of licorice spread across his tongue.

"I may ask you to help me again, Damian," the woman breathed, her hand coming up to brush the pads of cold dirty fingers against the soft fullness of the boy's cheeks. "Don't forget."

Damian stared up at the woman for a long moment, thinking that he hadn't done anything, when he heard his mother's voice calling for him from somewhere far away behind him.

Damian looked over his shoulder toward the source of his mother's voice, before looking back at the woman with a frown.

She pulled her hand away and straightened with a frown.

"Go," she said quietly.

Damian shoved the paper into his pocket and picked up the handle of the lantern. He turned around and quickly started back toward the stairs and the increasingly impatient sound of his mother's voice.

"But, don't forget me," the woman's voice called after him.


	13. The Cave

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The group try to escape through the network of caves beneath the Manor.

Bruce pressed his back against the dark wood paneling outside the bathroom as he listened to his son vomit from the other side of the wall. The sounds were tortured, but they were starting to calm down. Bruce could hear the sound of a soft female voice speaking to Damian interspersed with the harsh sounds of him being sick. Bruce relaxed somewhat knowing that the young blond girl was in there with Damian.

Between being sick himself, Dick had choked out what he had seen during their strange trance. The knowledge was ... unsettling.

Bruce had expected to find relief once he finally knew what was connecting his son to the malicious happenings in his childhood home. Instead, he found himself rocked, set adrift, once he knew. All the rumors he had brushed off as the side effects of a ghastly family history suddenly took on a new light. Nightmares that had been assuaged away in the morning when he was young took on a more threatening light in his memory.

Damian's vomiting soon petered out into dry heaving and finally subsided into heavy breathing that was soon covered up by the sound of running water.

"There has to be a way out of this hellhole," a deep angry voice whispered from further down the hall.

This came from Jason, Bruce realized with an involuntary jolt of anger. The rest of the participants were ranged along the hall outside the bathroom like him, all of them having agreed not to split up when Dick and Damian expressed an urgent need to go to the bathroom. Dick, Damian and Stephanie were all currently closed up in the first floor restroom; Dick recovering from his nausea, Damian still being affected by his and Steph trying to comfort and assist the both of them.

"What do you suggest?" Bruce heard Selina ask, reproach clear in her voice.

"I don't know!" Jason whispered back loudly. "There has to be something we haven't tried."

"We've tried all the windows and doors in every way possible," Tim's quiet voice came between them. "We've tried opening them, breaking them and levering them open and nothing has worked. But, Jason is right. We haven't tried everything."

"What are you thinking?" Bruce asked, turning toward the others for the first time.

Tim looked surprised that Bruce was speaking to him directly and waffled for a moment, before gathering his courage and answering, "I saw probably a dozen chimneys from outside when I arrived. We could try escaping through one of them. I can't imagine a way the house could stop us. And, if at least one of us gets out they could go for help."

Selina's looked thoughtful for a moment before nodding. "Only a few of us would be small enough and strong enough to make the climb, but it could work," she agreed slowly.

"There are a lot of variables," Bruce argued, quickly seeing all the flaws in the college student’s suggestion. "The Manor has surprised us before in its ingenuity in keeping us inside. Glass doesn't break and wood doesn't splinter," he rumbled, mostly talking to himself. "Besides the fact that the house could very well figure out a way to stop us from escaping through the chimneys, even if someone gets out that way they still need to get down from the roof and even then we know that the yard isn't any safer than the rest of the house."

Everyone looked away, either put off by the obvious problems with the plan or trying to ponder another way out.

"There is something else we could try..." Barbara said haltingly. Everyone looked at her in anticipation. Clearing her throat, she continued slowly. "If we were able to access the caves below the Manor, we could escape through them."

"Damian doesn't even know for sure how he got down there both times, though," Tim replied. "Whatever passageway there is, it's not on the schematics you have either, right?"

"It's probably not on the schematics, but there's a hidden staircase in the study," Bruce replied, his mind already quickly turning the solution over and over trying to find a hole in the idea. "But, even if we go down there, the caves are dangerous. I was trapped in them for days as a boy."

"I never heard that," Jason said, turning to frown at Bruce. "How'd that happen?" He sounded offended that there was something that had happened in Gotham that he didn't know about.

"When I was a boy, I fell through a sinkhole in the backyard that emptied into an underground stream. I was swept down into the caves. It took a long time for anyone to find me," Bruce explained quietly. Those days in the caves were hazy, much of the detail smudged and faded out by time and his own reticence to recall anything in particular.

"The caves are filled with water, most of which empties out into the bay to the south and the ocean to the east," Bruce explained more clearly. "The currents are fast and the water will be cold. It would be dangerous to go down there under even the best circumstances."

"What choice do we have?" Barbara asked, a note of desperation in her voice. "You've pointed out that the chimneys have a lot of chances to fail. The caves do too, but at least with them we can traverse them together and have a chance of moving out of the range of the haunting before anything serious can happen."

"What about the woman?" Selina pointed out. "Damian has only ever encountered her down there. It's very likely that if we go down there with him that we'll run into her."

"I believe that it's a chance that we should take," Barbara answered confidently. "The longer we wait the more powerful she and the Manor get. The weaker Damian gets," she added quietly.

Bruce's frown cut deep lines into the planes of his face at that. He looked away for a moment, a sickening feeling twisting in his gut at the thought of some kind of ... creature feeding off of his son. He realized that, despite the risk, he agreed with Barbara. The chance of success outweighed the risk involved.

"Tell me you have a plan," Bruce said.

* * *

It took a few hours for them to assemble everything they needed. It would have gone faster, but they decided to go together to retrieve everything and every time they thought that they had everything, someone would think of something else they should bring.

The clock was striking midnight when all of them were finally gathered in the study with backpacks and dufflebags sitting open at their feet. They had collectively decided to ditch non-essentials (extra clothing, hygiene items, etc) to make room to carry water bottles, non-perishable food, flashlights, extra batteries for said flashlights and other emergency supplies.

"Does everybody have everything they need?" Barbara asked solemnly, zipping up her own bag and pulling it over her shoulders. Around the room, chins dipped in nods of agreement as everyone else followed suit, closing their bags and hoisting them onto backs and shoulders. "All right, then," Barbara sighed. "Let's get going."

She lead the way over to a grandfather clock ticking loudly in one corner. Following Bruce’s instructions, she moved the hour hand around the clock face three times before she heard a loud click and the whole clock jumped slightly toward her. Sure enough, when she took hold of the clock’s edge and pulled it toward her, it swung out on a hinge to reveal a winding staircase going straight down.

Barbara descended the first few slightly slick steps leading down into the darkness. Looking back up above her, she motioned for the others to follow her.

They followed sedately. Bruce first, then Damian, then Jason, Selina, Tim and Steph until they were all following Barbara down the hallway in a single file line, their flashlights lighting the way. They walked single file down the steps until they finally reached a long uneven hallway at the bottom.

The ground under their feet was a fine gravel. The walls were a dark gray and slightly damp. The whole hallway dipped slightly down in a gradual slope disappearing into darkness. Barbara turned her flashlight on and pointed it down the hallway, but the light wasn't strong enough to penetrate the darkness and reach its end.

They walked for a long time, the soft draft blowing into their face growing colder and wetter as time went on until they finally were let out into a large cavernous area with only the sound of their own shuffling feet and the soft churn of water against the gravel shore to greet them.

"We must be in the main artery of the caves, directly under the Manor," Barbara said quietly, but her voice rang out like gunshots in the still quiet of the cave anyway. She put her flashlight down and then shrugged out of her backpack so that she could open it and pull a sheaf of papers and maps out. Tim moved toward Barbara, crouching down beside her to help examine the map.

Damian stuck close to his father, trying to stand as close to him as possible while also trying not to let how anxious he was show. Bruce struggled similarly against an urge to press Damian against his side or otherwise reassure himself with a physical touch.

Dick shined his flashlight up at the ceiling and out into the dark expanse of still air and clear cold water. His flashlight shined on stalactites dripping down from the ceiling, but otherwise didn't illuminate anything unusual. That still didn’t push his rushing heart to rest.

"This place is creepy," Jason whispered, his voice as loud as Barbara's had been, despite trying to be quiet. "We're really underneath the Manor?"

"There's a story about why the Manor was built on top of the caves," Bruce answered, only half of his attention on Jason, the other half dedicated to surveying the cave for any sign of threats. "But, I can't remember what it was. I do remember my father telling me that was how we got so many bats in the house, though."

"Bats," Jason hissed, quickly looking up as if expecting one to come diving toward him. "Awesome," he added sarcastically.

"The east branch of the caves should be that way," Barbara said, pointing off to their left and slightly forward, "If I'm judging our location right," she added doubtfully.

The shafts of light thrown by their flashlights all turned to point in the direction that Barbara had indicated. There was a collective silence as their lights only illuminated the wet shine of dark water.

"It's flooded," Tim said quietly, a heavy despair packed into those two words.

"It might not be that deep," Steph suggested optimistically.

"How do we know?" Selina asked doubtfully.

"I'll go in," Bruce said, causing everyone to turn and look in his direction. Dick noted that Damian's hand was fastened to the material of Bruce's shirt, but didn't see when that had happened.

"It's dangerous," Barbara said quickly. "You said yourself that the currents are fast."

"Then, I would understand that best, wouldn't I?" Bruce countered, his voice becoming somewhat sharp.

Barbara took a step back, surprised.

Bruce gently removed Damian's hand from his shirt, before moving toward where the ground met the water and ignoring all of the doubtful and mystified looks ranged around him. Damian stared after his father with an intense look, but said nothing.

The water was shockingly cold, but Bruce didn't allow himself to slow and he steadily walked toward the direction that Barbara had pointed in. He worried that if he allowed himself to falter, he wouldn't be able to continue forward.

The water sloshed into his leather loafers first, soaking his socks quickly and weighing down his steps. The cold bite of the water then slowly climbed up his legs with each step he took until it ringed his waist and he had to swing his arms to make the momentum to keep walking.

Bruce held his flashlight above his head as he advanced and, once the water had reached his waist, found himself at the wide and low mouth of another smaller cave. The current picked up slightly there, pulling him toward the opening.

"I found it!" Bruce called back to the others. They looked significantly smaller from where he was standing, their flashlights dancing futilely against the water behind him.

"How deep is it?" Barbara's voice called back to him.

Bruce was about to answer when he felt something brush against his ankle. At first, he thought it might be a fish. But, then he realized that he was in a lightless fresh water cave. The water was cold all the time and flowing fresh from springs in the hills around Gotham containing none of the bacteria and plant life that fish needed to survive.

“Bruce?” Barbara called again when he did not respond.

“There’s something in the water,” Bruce said to himself.

No sooner had the words left his mouth before what was clearly a hand latched on to his ankle and gave an unearthly strong yank, pulling Bruce easily under the water with a loud splash.

“Father!” Damian shouted, running toward the water as soon as he saw his father flounder and fall. He would have dived straight in if Steph hadn’t caught him hard around his middle and backed him steadily away from the water. She wrapped surprisingly strong arms around him, holding him tight in a crushing hug.

As Steph held Damian back from the water, Selina didn’t hesitate to run and then jump lithely into it, diving beneath the surface and swimming swiftly to where they had last seen Bruce.

Jason bit out a caustic, “Fuck!” before shrugging out of his leather jacket and following after Selina with much less grace, but catching up to her quickly with a few powerful pumps of his arms and legs.

“I should -” Dick started to say before Barbara cut him off with a sharp hand pressed to the center of his chest.

“No!” she snapped. “We don’t need anyone else to throw themselves into danger,” she added harshly. “Quick, shine a light.”

Panic blooming in his chest like dye in a glass of water, Dick turned and quickly shuffled through the duffle bag at his feet until he came up with a large spotlight. Turning, he shined it over the water until it found the point where the sounds of splashing and tumult originated. Once the light came in contact with the three people struggling against whatever it was that was under the water, there was an echoing and inhuman screech before the struggling slowed down and slowly all three of their group got unsteadily to their feet and looked uncertainly around them.

“What happened?” Tim croaked, looking pale and drawn where he stood awkwardly between Steph and Damian and Barbara and Dick.

“The smart money is on the creature that Damian met down here,” Barbara answered quietly. “Selina was right. It’s still here.”

Selina, Jason and Bruce had seemed to complete taking stock of one another and were slowly moving back toward the shore and the others.

“Then, we can’t escape through the caves?” Steph asked quietly, still hugging Damian close even though the danger had passed. The teenager in her arms looked sulky, but didn’t push her away.

“No, we can still get out through here,” Barbara responded resolutely. “So long as we have our secret weapon,” she added with a sharp grin and a pointed look at the spotlight that Dick was still holding in his shaking hands.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I couldn't actually remember how Bruce usually enters the cave from the Manor. I think he actually uses a bust with a hidden button or, if he uses the clock, he sets the time to when his parents died to unlock the hidden door. But, that wouldn't have made sense in the context of this AU. Whatever.
> 
> Next chapter is the next to last chapter! Are you happy or sad? (I'm a little excited to finally almost be done.)


	14. Escape

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The group attempt to traverse the caverns under Wayne Manor and are approached by apparitions from the past.

Barbara lead the way down the eastern branch of the cave system. Luckily, there had been a step up to enter the cave, so the water came to the middle of her thigh. Even so, the water resistance made it hard to walk forward with any kind of speed and made her legs burn with the effort it took to keep moving forward.

The water was still cold, but her body had adjusted so that she no longer noticed it. The caves were deadly quiet around her, except for the sound of loud splashing that their combined walking made as they slowly advanced.

Per Barbara's instructions, the group was walking in a very specific formation. Barbara was at the front of the group and holding the floodlight, their most powerful light, in front of her and periodically sweeping it to the left and right. Walking slightly behind and to the left and right of her were Tim and Steph, who were holding their own flashlights and shining them wherever her floodlight wasn't pointing. Behind them were Bruce, Damian and Selina with Damian in the middle.

It had been Barbara's idea to keep Damian and Bruce in the center of their group to give them as much cover as possible. Arguably, the two of them were the focus of the supernatural happenings, judging from the occurrences so far. Bruce had been reluctant initially, but putting him on the outside with Selina had seemed to assuage his hurt pride somewhat. All three of them also had flashlights, the two adults sticking close to Damian.

Finally, Dick and Jason were bringing up the rear, trying to keep their eyes toward their back as much as possible.

"Something's here," Jason whispered harshly, breaking the tense silence that all of them had been walking in for some number of minutes.

Everyone stopped walking, looking around nervously, flashlights flicking over dripping rock walls and rough but clear water.

"Don't stop moving," Barbara admonished them, pausing only to glance backward at everyone meaningfully before she started walking steadily forward again, slower now and moving her light around the cave with more purpose.

"How do you know something's here?" Barbara heard Dick whisper above the sound of their combined walking that stirred the water around them.

"I'm not just here for show, Dick," was Jason's caustic return. Barbara wasn't sure if he meant Dick's name or the cuss word.

"Oh. Right," she heard Dick mutter indistinctly, before another unfamiliar voice echoed through the cavern with them.

It was high pitched, making it sound very young and possibly feminine. Again, everyone in the group was brought to a quick halt in surprise only to be pushed back into movement by Barbara's sharp whisper of "Keep moving!"

As they continued to walk, the voice got louder and more distinct.

"Damian," was the first word that Barbara made out for sure, followed by "Where are you all going?" The young voice sounded distressed, even a little watery, its words wavering slightly with each intonation.

The disembodied voice continued on like that for some time, her questioning becoming more distraught and desperate the farther they went, not to mention clearer and louder. Finally, after one very loud cry of "Why are you leaving?" Barbara had to stop as her spotlight shined briefly on the indistinct figure of a small girl in pigtails standing against the right side of the cave.

Trying her best to follow her own advice, Barbara very slowly and deliberately stepped forward, keeping her light trained on the figure all the while.

The little's girl's skin was white, very white, like parchment paper. Her dark blue eyes were sunk deep in her head and her lips were a pale petal pink. She was dressed in a sailor outfit, navy blue with white striping along the collar and the edge of her pleated skirt with a white kerchief tied around her neck. Below the water, Barbara could make out white knee high socks with a matching navy blue ring around the top and black mary janes on her feet. Her black hair was tied in pigtails with blue ribbons and her eyes were wet with tears.

She wrung her small chubby white hands together and asked in a smaller voice, "Where are you going?"

"Don't talk to her," Barbara whispered, cutting a look back at the group of people behind her. They all looked pale and their expressions varied from terrified to pitying. She noted that Damian's eyes were especially wide and his mouth was open as if he wanted to say something, but couldn't conjure the words. Barbara didn’t fail to notice Bruce had a hand on Damian’s back, gently urging him forward.

"Why are you leaving?" the girl cried as they moved to walk past her, a sob tagging along quickly with her words, her face crumpling and the tears coming faster now.

"Are you just going to leave me here?" she flung angrily at their backs as they slowly trudged away through the water. None of them answered her and none, save Damian, turned to look at her as they left.

Afterward, the only sound they heard in the cave were the slowly diminishing sound of the girl's heartbroken sobs and their own footsteps.

A few minutes later, after the crying had finally receded into silence, Selina muttered, "Well, I'm not going to sleep well after this," with a hint of self-reproach.

"Were you going to before?" Tim asked dryly.

"Pipe down, you guys," Jason broke in on them, "and get ready for round two."

"You can't be serious," Steph whispered, perhaps only to herself.

"As a funeral," Jason answered anyway.

Sure enough, shortly after Jason had warned them, the sound of female laughter started to echo faintly around them. Weakly, at first, then stronger as they moved closer. The sound was flirtatious initially, warm and inviting, but changing into something harsh and cruel by the time that Barbara's floodlight finally illuminated its source.

What was obviously Olivia Havilland, the famous and mysterious 1930s Hollywood actress whose picture leant itself to the walls of the game room high above them, leaned against the cold stone cave wall and regarded them coldly.

She was dressed beautifully in a shining red satin dress that hugged her every curve, and she had many of them. The dress dipped low in the front to showcase a deep set of cleavage and was cut high on the side to show the long set of her perfectly shaped legs. Her dark lustrous brown hair was done up in finger waves and her lips were painted cherry red, her eyes smudged with artful dark makeup. Barbara could make out a set of matching red high heels in the clear water.

"Where do you think you boys are going?" she asked, her voice deep and smokey, a playful cant to her hips. "Surely you don't think you're leaving the Manor?"

Following Barbara's previous advice, none of them spoke to her and a few of them (Jason and Bruce) made a point of not even looking at her.

This seemed to make her angry and, as they passed her without a word or reaction, her face changed from one of sexual invitation to one of derision and disgust.

"If you think you can get out of here, you're a lot stupider than you look!" she yelled at them as they passed her, her stance falling out of its relaxed stance and into an aggressive one, her head thrust forward and her hands in fists at her sides. "Don't you think all those other Wayne boys tried at one point or another? All those other psychics?" she spat the last word. "You'll never leave here alive!" she screamed after them, her last word echoing after them long after they had passed and left her in complete darkness.

They kept walking forward for what seemed like a long time after passing the apparition of Olivia Havilland.

"Is this going to be a theme or something?" Tim asked quietly over the splashing of their feet collectively pushing through the water around them. His voice wavered, despite the bravado of the words themselves.

"I've never felt this much emotional spirit bullshit focused in one place in my whole life," Jason added, his voice sounding a little rusted itself. "I don't think that those two are the only ones who are going to show their ugly mugs before this is through."

"Whatever they throw at us," Barbara cut in sharply, "we'll get through it."

They continued silently for another few minutes, just the light of their flashlights, the sound of their footfalls in the water and their own heavy breathing to keep them company.

"It's happening again," Jason warned as the temperature in the cave dropped a few degrees.

They continued on silently with no sound to alert them to the presence of anything other than each other in the cave, until the edge of a flashlight lit on a shock of pink.

Faltering, Steph, Barbara and many others pointed their flashlights toward where the quick flash of color had come from. They all found themselves pointing their lights at Vicki Vale's pale angry visage.

"Vicki," Bruce whispered, stepping forward before Selina's hand on his elbow stopped him.

She looked much like she had in the solarium. She was still wearing a soft pink cashmere sweater, dark worn jeans and a pair of sporty sneakers. Her hair was no longer lank and dirty, but soft and coiffed like she normally wore it, garishly red in the dark cave. Her skin no longer looked oily and waxy, but was more pale than before, her bright blue eyes pale like the eyes of a dead fish and sunk deep into dark eye sockets. Her lips looked swollen, obscenely red and the blue veins beneath her skin could easily be seen in the bright flashlight beams.

"So, that's it, huh?" she rasped quietly, not taking her eyes off of Bruce. "You're all going to escape together and just leave me behind?"

"Vicki," Bruce said again, Selina's hand still firmly holding him in place.

"I guess I never mattered, did I?" she asked, an accusation and a sob of self-deprecation hiding behind her words. "You're always the hero of your own story, Bruce Wayne," she snapped, her brow crumbling with the words. "There's never any spotlight left for anyone, but you. So, just go! Forget about me!"

Vicki folded soft white delicate looking hands over her face and bowed her head as Barbara tugged and gestured for the group to keep moving.

"I know you meant to anyway," Vicki's soft lament followed them as they moved away from her, abandoning what was left of the female reporter to the beast that was Wayne Manor.

They kept walking, silence falling again, guilt and confusion seething in the silence until Selina broke it by saying, "What is the meaning of all this?" Her hand tightened where it was still hooked in Bruce's elbow. He had no intentions of shaking her off. "They all line up like little toy soldiers and we walk by as they shout their regrets at us. What's the point?"

"Maybe they're just following the source of their energy," Barbara suggested, cutting a backward glance toward Damian who was walking to the right of his father now, maintaining the eerie silence he had started since he first fell unconscious. "Because Damian is down here, so are the ghosts," she added.

"Nah," Jason said dismissively. "The big bad bitch is sending them to try and scare us off. Obviously they're not as put off by the light as she is," he said, shaking his flashlight at the ceiling for full effect.

Dick laughed nervously. "You really are some kind of expert on this ghost stuff, I guess."

Jason huffed, deflating and folding in on himself at the compliment. Dick frowned, but didn't comment any further, taking the hint. Obviously, his talent wasn't something he was proud of.

"Either way, there's no more, right?" Steph asked hopefully, shining her light down the cave and into the heavy darkness ahead of them.

"There's more," Jason sighed. "Two or three is my guess. Not counting our lady captor."

The rest of them fell silence, the strain and fear of meeting their, up til now, dead and invisible house companions weighing on them heavily.

Jason didn't bother to say anything when the distinct feeling cold invaded his limbs, the feeling that indicated to him that a dead spirit was around. He could feel the tenseness in the group and knew that they were already expecting it.

They heard rattling breath and nervous laugh before they saw him standing slightly bent along the right side of the cave. Bruce corralled Damian back between himself and Selina, finally allowing her hand to slip off of his arm.

Allan Wayne was dressed in a black tuxedo with a starched white shirt. He was bent slightly forward, his long bony hands pressed against his sternum as quiet nervous laughter filtered out of his mouth. His dark hair looked like it had been slicked to the side at one time, but was falling free of its mold a few strands at a time. Above the starched white collar of his shirt were livid purple marks on his neck, similar to what might be left by a noose.

"Allan Wayne," Damian muttered, recognizing his ancestor from the stories and pictures he had seen.

As soon as they came even with the quietly laughing apparition of the long dead Wayne scion, he froze as if he had suddenly run out of air and looked up at them with wild eyes, his pupils blown so wide that only a thin ring of watery blue hugged them.

"It's not safe here," he muttered urgently. "It's not safe."

"Keep moving," Barbara frowned, marching forward steadfastly herself. The others weren't as fast, lingering slightly in front of the dead man.

"It was safe in the Manor. I could protect you somewhat there," Allan said, almost to himself, his eyes not training on any single one of them. "She's far too strong here. This is what she wants. You're playing right into her hands," Allan whispered urgently.

Suddenly, the ghost lunged and grasped onto Jason's sleeve pulling desperately. Steph gasped before covering her mouth, sounding out the surprise that everyone else in the group felt at seeing an apparition actually touch and effect something and someone in the physical realm.

Jason didn't share their surprise or their fear. He harshly shook off the old man, disgust curling his lip as he snarled, "Fuck off! Why don't you parrot her some more?"

The ghost stumbled back a few steps and then looked up at Jason confused for a moment. Everyone frozen, save Jason, who folded his arms over his broad chest and frowned down at the apparition in challenge.

Allan Wayne's lips twitched and then pulled themselves into a manic grin before he folded over himself again, hands pressed to his chest, head bowed, rocking back and forth slightly as he giggled to himself.

Huffing out a dismissive breath, Jason turned away from the ghost and started walking slowly forward again. Taking his cue, the other's did the same, turning away from the apparition of Allan Wayne and moving forward.

When the silence became too heavy, Steph squeaked hesitantly, "Is it really safer upstairs?"

"No!" Jason, Barbara and Bruce answered her in unison. The three looked at each other bashfully, before Barbara explained, "No, honey. Jason was right. They're taking their lines from the woman. She can't face us directly, so she's sending other ghosts to do her dirty work."

Steph nodded to indicate her understanding, but her expression stayed doubtful and scared. Tim sent her a sympathetic look, hoping that she understood that he felt the same way.

It seemed like they walked a long time in silence after that, the longest between meeting any ghosts since the first one. As they continued forward, the cave started to curve slightly toward their right. The floor widened even as the ceiling grew lower, the stalactites started to reach low enough to cause them to have to detour and duck around them and sometimes growing into large columns along the walls.

It was past one of these columns that Barbara's light momentarily lit up left half of a man tucked behind one. He was revealed so quickly that Barbara jumped and let out an undignified squeak at the sight of him, before quickly smoothing herself back down with an embarrassed, "Excuse me."

The group gave the ghost a wide berth with the extra room afforded by the wider cave as they pointed their flashlights at him.

He was dressed in some kind of period clothing, a thick dark blue wool coat with tarnished brass buttons, heavy tan linen pants tucked into the tops of black leather boots that looked like they had seen better days. There was a leather strap across his chest and an old musket attached to it, slung across his back. He was wearing a wide brimmed hat and had a black handkerchief tied over his nose and mouth, sharp mean looking dark blue eyes glinted in the electric light back at them under thick dark brows.

Then, there was the knife. It had a black handle with a silver pommel and was embedded deep in the man's chest, just to the right of his sternum. There was a dark stain around the blade that bled slightly downward across his coat.

"Joshua Wayne," Bruce breathed as he shuffled past the man. At his name, the man's eyes snapped to Bruce and didn't leave him until they were many yards past him.

"Who is Joshua Wayne?" Damian asked quietly when they were past him.

"He died in the Civil War," Bruce replied simply, not wanting to go into details. Like how Joshua Wayne had been heavily involved in the Civil War fighting for the Union. Or, how his primary job in the war was ferreting out spies within the Union army and killing them. Or, how he was killed on the ground where the Manor would eventually be built after confronting a confederate spy. He didn't need to add to the dark thoughts already swirling in his son's head.

The dead eyes of Joshua Wayne left the group feeling as unnerved as they had when the ghosts had first started showing up. They squeezed closer to one another as they traveled forward silently. As they did so, the cave continued to widen and the smell of the ocean’s salt started to come in on the breeze.

“We have to be getting close,” Tim said quietly as the distant sound of waves crashing against the cliff started to echo through the still cavern. 

The sound and smell of the ocean got stronger until they finally say a faint light appear around a corner, the half light of a cloudy night sky shining down on the rocky cliffs of the north east coast. Silhouetted sharply standing along the lip of the cave, frothy white waves stirring around her ankles, was a woman.

Her long wavy black hair hung over her shoulders, over the swell of her breasts and past her tightly cinched waist to swing at her hips. Her skin was pale white in the thin light afforded by the moon and stars hidden behind a thin veil of clouds. She wore a threadbare and torn black dress with a full skirt that stirred around her bare feet and ankles with the incoming tide.

Her face was not hidden behind her hair and in the soft light it was beautiful. She had full lips, dark eyes framed by long full lashes and an artfully crafted brow over high cheekbones. Her face was beautiful, even though it was contorted into a wrathful expression.

“You will go no further,” she spoke, her voice low and harsh like the waves crashing around her, barely audible as it melted into the sound of the sea.

She stretched her arm out and as she did so the shadows milling around her feet stretched out as well, far beyond the reach of her long thin white fingers. Darkly defined shadows twined beneath the churning water around their feet, their trajectory determined and fast unfolding.

Barbara quickly pointed her floodlight down around them and watched as the shadows twitched sharply before dissolving into the opaque water around them.

The woman hissed in a breath, curling her full plum colored lips away from a set of straight white teeth. Dark eyes focused accusingly on Barbara and the hand that was once outstretched clutched at her heaving chest.

“This stops here!” another voice called out, strong and feminine, loud and unwavering. It was so different from the softer and breathier voice of the dark haired woman in front of them as to be immediately noticeable.

The heads of everyone in the group as well as multiple shafts of flashlight light cast around the cave in panic until they started to land on the figure of a woman standing to the left of the entrance and becoming more solid the longer she stood there.

She appeared as a pale red haired woman in a dark green velvet dress. Although, her hair was more of a bright orange than red, piled on top of her head and curling in wisps around her face. Her eyes were dark brown smudges in a proud and angular face. Her form was much less real than the woman standing in the center of the cave’s mouth. She was like smoke momentarily forming an image of color and shape, shifting out of focus for a moment, only to twist back together into sharp again.

“You can’t stop me,” the dark haired woman sneared, as the group held very still, thrown off by the appearance of the red haired woman. “You can’t stop anyone!” she hissed and the sound of the waves behind her rose and grew more fervent as if responding to her turbulent emotions.

“Quite the contrary,” the red haired woman’s cultured voice responded, her mouth twisting to indicate a crooked smirk before her form fell apart, her colors running and shifting as she blew toward the dark haired woman, dark greens, pale cream and bright orange twisting around the woman that blocked their path, causing her to wave her hands and scream, stumbling and twisting every which way. She appeared that she couldn’t decide whether to flee from the other woman’s assault or to try to stand her ground and block their way.

After only a moment’s hesitation, Barbara shouted, “Run!” grabbing Tim by his elbow and hauling him along behind her, trusting that the others would follow.

Her trust was wisely placed, as the rest of her group did follow her as she ran to the far right of the cavern, giving the two tussling ghosts room to spare as she hustled out into the brisk ocean air and onto the gravel shore a few feet below. The water pooled around her waist, high tide coming in with a vengeance, the waves throwing her and Tim against the rock wall as they stumbled outside.

She cast around wildly, praying that her map was right and that the stairs would be nearby. Just a few feet to her right she saw the stone steps cut into the side of the cliff. They were precarious, shining wet with the ocean spray coming up around them. The bottom steps were so badly worn that just the suggestion of steps were left, years of crashing ocean surface having slowly chipped away at their definition.

She tugged Tim toward the stairs and, once she was sure he was following, let go of him so that he would stop crashing into her every time a wave came in. Ascending the stairs was treacherous and she went on all fours at first, hands and feet getting nearly no traction against the slippery well worn stone. The higher she climbed, however, the dryer and rougher the stone got until she felt confident about standing on two feet and pressing her hands against the rock wall to her right.

Looking back, she saw the string of people following her, making much the same movements she had made just moments ago. Tim and Steph were cautiously getting to their feet behind her, as was Damian. Bruce and Selina kept their fingertips brushing the steps in front of them and Dick and Jason appeared to be fully crouched over, still soaked by the surf and pushing one another away from the entrance just behind them.

“No!” a voice like the ocean screamed and the sound was like wind struggling against the cliff face. The voice was chased by a mocking laugh, loud and strong and obviously emanating from the cave that they were busy trying to escape.

Barbara ignored the voices, pushing through the feeling of her own heart pounding in fear behind her ribs, and climbed the dangerous staircase as quickly as she could manage and still stay safely pressed to the cliff face.

When she finally reached the top of the stairs she collapsed on her hands and knees into the soft high grass a few feet from the edge. She kept her head down as she heard and felt other people come up the stairs behind her and collapse in limp soggy heaps around her.

Once her heart stopped hurting from all the shocks it had suffered in just the last few hours alone and her stomach had settled somewhat, she lifted her head to survey their surroundings. The first thing she saw was the imposing figure of Wayne Manor standing on a high hilltop above them. The moonlight was breaking through the clouds, shining brightly enough through the low hanging cloud to illuminate the Manor’s high stone walls and large overgrown trees that were unable to overtake her tall towers and branching wings.

Barbara put her head down on the grass and decided that she didn’t want to look up again.


	15. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Six months after the group escapes from Wayne Manor, they meet one last time.

Damian woke up in the morning, surprised to feel his limbs still heavy with sleep, his head clear and his body rested. It had been weeks since the last time he had experienced a truly restful sleep and he hadn’t expected to sleep well that night of all nights.

The light in his room was a thin pale blue, telling him that it was most likely very early. The sun had not yet peaked over the horizon, but close was enough to lighten the sky in preparation of illumination.

Damian crawled out of bed and stretched and enjoyed feeling good in the early morning light for once. Not caring to sleep any longer, he padded across his room to his door and pushed it open into the darkened hall. He made his way blearily toward the kitchen, intending to scavenge for something to eat without the usual weight of Alfred’s gaze on his back. But, he was stopped by the sight of a familiar figure slumped low in an armchair in the living room.

He recognized his father, his face cut by lines of exhaustion, sitting in the armchair and staring blankly out the large pane glass window facing out on Gotham’s expansive skyline. He was dressed in only a pair of gray silk boxers and a black robe that hung open down his front.

Damian approached his father slowly, unused to the sight of him either up so early or in such a state of undress. It spoke to a level of distress in the older Wayne that Damian hadn’t previously thought possible.

“Father?” Damian asked cautiously, when he was standing only a few feet away from his father and had not yet been acknowledged.

Bruce’s head swiveled toward his son, his dark blue eyes bleary and unfocused. “Damian,” he responded, his voice very rough “You’re up early,” he commented. “How did you sleep?”

Damian’s mouth twisted in guilt. He didn’t want to answer that he had slept better than he had in weeks when his father looked so obviously haggard and tormented. Instead, he turned the question back on his father.

“How did you sleep?” he asked.

Bruce smirked, a dry turn of humor stirring in him. “Not at all,” he answered with a self-deprecating chuckle.

Damian frowned at his father, debating what to do. He could leave his father and go to the kitchen or even go back to his room. That was probably what his father expected him to do. He could go find Alfred, who was probably already up at this hour, and point him toward dealing with his father’s depressing mood. Or, he could try to do something himself.

After some hesitation, Damian came over and sat on the floor by his father’s knee. It was something he had done on a few occasions with his grandfather when he lived with his mother overseas, but he had never taken the pose with his father.

He stared out the huge window that took up the whole of the outward facing wall like his father. The city swept out before him, looking pale and clean in the faint morning light, the water of the bay shining bright with each cresting wave.

“For what it’s worth, I think you’re doing the right thing,” Damian said quietly, pressing his back against his father’s shin. He felt his father’s body relax slightly at his words.

“Thank you,” Bruce sighed, before the both of them lapsed back into silence.

* * *

When Dick woke up that same morning (but significantly later than the two Wayne men), it was to a pounding headache. The pain radiated from the back of his head and behind his eyes to meet in the middle in a conflagration.

Groaning, Dick cracked his eyes and experienced a brief moment of panic as he realized he had no idea where he was. There was a small frosted glass window above him shining a bright light into the small room. The walls were white tile and looking down he realized that this made sense, as he was sitting in a bathtub. To his left were a small white toilet and a pedestal sink with a mirrored medicine cabinet hanging above it.

After taking in his surroundings, Dick realized that on top of an amazing headache, he was also incredibly nauseous. Just the act of looking around was making him dizzy, his stomach turning angrily at the movement.

Little by little, he started to remember the broad strokes of the evening that had lead him to where he was.

The first thing he had done on getting into Gotham was to call Barbara to see if she wanted to hang out. She invited him over and the two of them had shared a nice home cooked dinner. She didn’t ask him to leave and he didn’t excuse himself, so they had after dinner drinks as they reminisced about the terrifying events at Wayne Manor.

From there it started to get blurry. Dick had found a bottle of rumchata in the back of Barbara’s cabinet and appropriated it for himself. He then, maybe, remembered getting pretty loud and maybe a little obnoxious. He couldn’t really remember what had lead him to the bathtub, though. He knew he was usually a pretty sloppy drunk, so he assumed that there was probably a good reason.

Dick wasn’t sure how long he laid in the bathtub trying his best to move as little as possible, before he heard someone moving outside the bathroom door. It wasn’t long after that before Barbara pushed open the bathroom door and jumped a little at the sight of Dick.

She gasped, pressing a hand to her chest and closing her eyes before pointing a judging look in Dick’s direction.

He smiled sheepishly and waved at Barbara while also trying to keep a hand over his eyes to shade the bright light.

“I forgot you were there,” Barbara sighed, walking over to the sink to run her hands distractedly through her tangled and tousled bright red hair.

“I also forgot that I was here,” Dick said slowly, earning a snort of amusement from the woman at the sink. “How did I get here again?” he asked, embarrassment coloring his words.

“Somewhere in the middle of vomiting dinner into my toilet, you decided to lay down in the tub and no power on heaven or earth could have moved you out of it,” Barbara responded matter-of-factly.

“The porcelain does feel nice and cool,” Dick confessed.

“Be that as it may, you’re going to have to move if either of us are going to get showered and dressed in time to make it to the party,” Barbara said firmly.

“I don’t think it’s exactly kosher to call it a party,” Dick responded, stalling for time before he had to move.

“Well, I’m not gonna call it a funeral,” Barbara said quietly.

Dick didn’t have anything to say to that. He sunk further into the tub.

“Come on, you fat lug!” Barbara yelled suddenly, whipping a towel at Dick and making him jump. “Move it or lose it!”

“Ouch. Fat?” Dick whined, worrying the towel between his hands.

“Out,” Barbara said firmly, pointing behind her toward the bathroom door.

Groaning at the case of vertigo that it caused him, Dick obligingly slithered out of the tub. He stumbled as he made his way out into the hall and toward the kitchen, hoping to find something to eat that he could actually keep down.

* * *

Jason was waiting outside of Tim’s dorm when the college student opened his front door. Tim found himself surprised to see Jason there. Tim was ten minutes early, which meant that Jason was even earlier.

Flicking the butt of his cigarette away into the street, Jason gave Tim a nod of acknowledgement before pulling a black full face helmet over his head and handing a matching one to Tim. Tim pulled it on before sliding on to the back of the bike behind Jason. He wrapped his arms around Jason’s stomach and felt the heat of him bleed through his jacket and into his chest.

The warmth of Jason’s back and the rumbling bike beneath him settled the flurry of anxiety in Tim’s stomach temporarily. The still novel excitement of riding along with Jason as he weaved around the early morning city traffic and up onto the almost desolate northern city streets distracted Tim from his own worries.

When they finally reached their destination, Jason put up the kickstand as Tim hopped off the bike and pulled off his helmet. The hill they were standing on was desolate and lonely, a cliff face standing on the edge of the ocean with the sound of crashing waves constantly in the air. It was the beginning of spring, but the air coming off of the ocean still had the bite of winter.

Tim heard the engine of the bike cut off before he heard Jason’s shoes crunching through the grass behind him. On the opposite hill from them stood Wayne Manor, as steadfast and imposing as it had been the first night they had all scrambled onto that hill from the cave below. The view was the same, but made very different by the bright midday sunlight shining all around them. Not to mention the striking sight of cranes and other construction equipment arrayed threateningly around the Manor.

Much of the foliage had been cleared away, as well as the high protecting wall. The Manor looked stripped, cornered. Helpless against the imposing machines and the milling humans all around it.

Jason linked his hand with Tim’s and they both stared at the Manor, waiting for the others to arrive.

* * *

Steph checked her face in the mirror in the sun visor one more time. She frowned at her reflection, unused to the bright red lipstick or the thick black eyeliner.

“Darling, you look beautiful. Don’t worry so much,” Selina purred from the driver’s seat, using her fingertips to smudge away a little bit of lipstick at the corner of her lips. She was checking herself out in the rear view mirror.

“Are you sure this isn’t to ...” Steph struggled for the word, frowning back at her reflection, “flamboyant? This is a pretty somber occasion.”

“Honey, I think makeup is a woman’s best defense. And, this is the kind of event where I’d like every kind of defense available,” Selina leveled a serious look at the younger girl beside her.

Steph stared back for a moment, before smiling and nodding in agreement.

Silently, the two women crawled out of Selina’s fast red sports car and made their way up the hill toward the small gathering.

It looked like they were the last to arrive. Bruce, Barbara and Jason were standing close together and talking lowly. Dick and Damian were standing near the cliff edge, looking down at the crashing waves below. Tim was standing off by himself, staring off toward the Manor.

Stephanie made straight for Tim while Selina split off toward the group of adults who were talking together. Steph gave Tim’s shoulder a bump once she reached him. He turned toward her, his smile tired, before dropping off completely. His eyebrows rose a little bit before he said, “Whoah.”

“What?” Step asked sharply.

“Nothing! Uh, you look nice,” Tim said, pointing a lopsided smile in her direction.

Steph flushed, something like an old ache starting in her chest, before she smiled brightly back at Tim. “Thanks!” she chirped back.

“Did Selina do your makeup?” he asked.

“No, Selina did not do my makeup,” Steph threw back. “I am a grown ass lady who does her own makeup.”

“Okay, okay!” Tim said quickly, a smile still tugging at the corner of his lips. “But, it is Selina’s makeup, right?”

“You are such a jerk!” Steph laughed, shoving Tim hard enough to make him stumble a few steps.

He laughed back, breaking through his own melancholy for the first time that day. “The color of your lipstick matches,” he added breathlessly.

“Only a weirdo like you would notice something like that,” Steph sighed.

“I imagine that Selina is the type of woman who only buys one brand and one shade of lipstick,” Tim kept on going.

“Okay, you need to stop being creepy right now,” Steph admonished him.

“Oh, I’m right?” Tim asked in interest.

“Guys!” Jason’s voice broke in on them, shaking them out of their cyclical banter. “We’re starting. Come on,” he called, his face much more grave than the two college students.

Looking at each other, Tim and Steph both sobered visibly before walking over to where all the others had gathered.

* * *

Barbara hadn’t wanted to call it a funeral, but that was what it might as well have been. There was a small plaque in the ground made of a marble of dark gray and pale cream. Engraved on it were the words:

> ‘To those lost or dead  
>  You are forever missed  
>  And never forgotten.’

Bruce handed out red roses, one for each person in attendance, and spoke somberly. He talked about the many lives that were lost in the construction of Wayne Manor. Then those who went missing or were found dead on the Manor grounds while it was still being lived in. Then, finally, those people who disappeared in pursuit of the truth about Wayne Manor.

Vicki’s name was never mentioned explicitly, but it was obvious that she was at the forefront of his mind during his speech.

Her disappearance had been in all the papers in the days and weeks following the investigation. After their escape, Bruce Wayne had engaged the police to search for her, although he declined to enter the house itself. The Gotham police had combed every inch of the manor and never found any indication that Vicki Vale had ever been there. All they had was Bruce’s word and Vicki’s purse.

Nothing was ever found of the female reporter. She was still considered an open missing person’s case that was unlikely to ever be solved.

At the conclusion of Bruce’s speech, each of them stepped up to the plague and put down their rose. They all stood silently for a few moments, reflecting on the events that had shaken them so deeply six months ago, when they were knocked out of their reverie by the sound of destruction behind them.

Turning, they were able to see the first cloud of dust rising from the Manor where the wrecking ball of the large crane struck it. As the smoke cleared, it became visible that nearly the entire western wing had been taken down with one hit. The whirring and rumbling of equipment continued as the crane repositioned before swinging again and taking down the west wall of the central hall. Then again to take down the east hall. And, so on, until all that was left were the jagged foundations of wood and brick that the wrecking ball hadn’t destroyed.

* * *

After the dust had settled, the group dispersed again with people piling into cars and onto bikes in pairs and driving back down into the city. Bruce had arranged for them all to eat in a private room at a popular restaurant in northern Gotham.

The meal at the Corkscrew restaurant was much more sober compared to the night that many of them spent at the bar the night before the investigation. Conversation was muted and subdued, the topics mostly superficial.

Selina asked Dick what he planned to do after this and he said he was going to stay in Gotham a few days before heading down south for another job. Bruce asked Tim and Steph how school was going and they complained in tandem about finals and expressed anxious anticipation for summer break. Barbara asked after Selina’s cats and she expressed worry over her dear Byron who continued to have drainage out of one ear. Nobody asked Jason much of anything, too cautious to poke a sleeping tiger.

As dinner was drawing to a close and the waiter was bringing around dessert, Tim fidgeted in his seat. There had been a question that had been bothering him for months and this would most likely be his last opportunity to ask about it.

“Has anybody, ah,” he asked hesitantly, but loudly enough to get everyone’s attention, “done any research on who the women we saw at the mouth of the cave might have been?”

Everyone seemed surprised at Tim’s question. They turned to look at one another, searching for an expression that might indicate an affirmative answer. Tim had been investigating tirelessly and had ideas and theories, but nothing he could land on with any certainty. Judging from the general surprise around the table, he was disappointed to find that he was probably the only one who had been willing to think about what had happened long enough to actually research it.

“I have,” a deep gravelly voice that he was only beginning to become familiar with answered. Bruce Wayne looked squarely at Tim, his eyes accessing the younger man sharply.

Tim swallowed around the frog in his throat that having the Wayne scion’s attention caused in him and responded, “Did you find anything?”

Taking a deep breath, Bruce turned to face the student more fully, ignoring the curious looks from the others at the table.

“The woman with the red hair was fairly easy to determine,” Bruce started. “She looked familiar to me in the cave, but upon investigation I found more information as to who I believe her to be.”

“Who was she?” Steph breathed, leaning forward anxiously, her half eaten dessert forgotten.

“I believe that she was Katherine Wayne,” Bruce responded evenly. “Wife to Alan Wayne, mother to Lucy Wayne. She fits the physical description perfectly. She also lived in Wayne Manor longer than anyone else, from the age of 19 to 89.”

Selina gave a low whistle and Dick muttered a surprised, “Wow.”

“Did you find anything out about the other woman?” Tim asked, curiosity overtaking his hesitance.

Bruce rubbed a hand roughly over his face, his expression troubled. “I did find something, but it’s just a hunch.”

“Don’t keep us in suspense,” Selina huffed. “Out with it.”

Bruce arched an eyebrow at her, but continued anyway. “There’s a journal I found from a Wayne head in the early 1700s when my family still lived in Boston. He was a puritanical preacher and in the journal he talked about how he was in love with a woman he only referred to as Annie.

“During the course of the journal, he proposes to her and she agrees to marry them. However, through the course of their engagement, he begins to suspect her of witchcraft.

“By the end of the journal,” Bruce continued, his voice lowering in pitch, his eyebrows drawing low over his eyes, “he does indeed bring charges against his fiance for witchcraft. She is later found guilty.

“She was sentenced to be hung from the gallows on the docks. With her last words, she declared a curse on the entire Wayne family.”

Everyone was silent in the wake of Bruce’s explanation, at a loss for what to say. The woman in the cave certainly meant to kill them, but it was a shock to learn how human she might have been once. How tragic her end was.

“How do you know that it’s her?” Damian asked slowly, breaking the silence.

“I don’t,” Bruce replied shortly. “But, her physical description along with her story matches most with what we experienced.”

Everyone at the table fell silent, staring down at the half eaten desserts or the empty plates in front of them. The sound of a happy and raucous group trailed in faintly from down the hall.

“Thank you,” Tim finally said faintly, “for sharing what you found.”

Bruce nodded brusquely in response, shoveling the last bit of a decadent dessert in his mouth and swallowing. He barely tasted it.

Conversation returned to the table, though it was somewhat more serious than before and much quieter. They didn’t linger at the table for very long after their plates were all cleared away and Bruce had deftly settled the bill.

The company moved outside into the bright afternoon sunshine and bid their farewells to one another in the parking lot. They then paired off with one another to disappear into cars or onto bikes before disappearing into the swarm of people that was Gotham.

* * *

Life after Wayne Manor was an odd coat to shrug into after everything that had happened. They all felt somehow radically changed, though nothing outwardly and often not much inwardly felt different. Certainly, the world around them continued much the same as ever.

Bruce felt somewhat liberated with the ghost of his ancestral home no longer lingering over his psyche. After he broke past the initial grief of loss, he felt lighter somehow. Like a curse had finally been lifted.

Selina continued much the same. She had gathered to herself about five more cats in the months after Wayne Manor and she no longer took ‘ghost hunting’ gigs, no matter how big the paycheck. She was also tickled to find her name in the paper more than once in small gossip columns talking about the latest strange lady hanging around Bruce Wayne.

Dick left Gotham promptly after their last meeting and made a promise to himself that he wouldn’t go back. He had learned his lesson. The imposing dark cement city wasn’t the kind of psychic sink that he wanted to hang around. But, time and again, he found himself stopping over for a few days to visit a particular red head. Funny how life works.

That particular red head, one Barbara Gordon, was left without much to show for her fantastic investigation of Wayne Manor. She had left all of her equipment inside Wayne Manor when they escaped. When her equipment was returned a few weeks later by police, all of the evidence on them had been utterly destroyed. Hard drives had been completely wiped or just utterly trashed, rolls of film had been overexposed and memory cards had been cracked in half. The police were emphatic that all of her equipment had been like that when they had retrieved it.

It was hard to know that their experiences may have been for nothing, so far as her scientific career was concerned. But, Barbara was surprised to find herself more determined than ever to continue with her own controversial field of study, rather than depressed or put off by the failure. She was excited to move on to the next investigation, empowered by her triumph over the terrifying Wayne Manor.

Jason’s experience at the manor caused him to be more distrustful than ever of the spirits around him. He didn’t feel any more comfortable with his psychic ability, either. But, he did find himself more willing to use it or to offer his services to others now that he knew they could be so useful as to save someone’s life. He still struggled with himself daily, but it was getting a little easier all the time.

Steph and Tim, after much discussion between each other, decided to stop using their psychic abilities all together. At least in the professional sense.

Tim took to wearing gloves when he went to unfamiliar places and Steph was less open about doing automatic writing for fun or as a bar joke.

Steph ended up switching her major to journalism that year. Tim remained in the science building, with a focus on fringe science and parapsychology. He also began to run paranormal investigations himself, relying on his natural curiosity and cutting intelligence to yield results, rather than exposing himself by using his psychic talents.

Damian’s nightmares ceased all together with the destruction of the manor. Much like his father, he felt a weight lifted with its disappearance.

Years later he would confront his mother about what had happened that day, hoping to find some more purpose to the terrible nights he suffered for years.

She never revealed why she had been at manor or what she was looking for. She never would.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's it! Sorry for the weak ending. I really struggled with it and just sort of landed on this.
> 
> If you liked this story and you'd like to read more of my stuff or would like to get updates when I post new stuff, I hope you consider checking out the other stories on my profile or follow me on tumblr at itspickleddeath.tumblr.com.


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